651-757-2343 February 17, 2021 Me

520 Lafayette Road North, Saint Paul, MN 55155| www.eqb.state.mn.us Phone: 651-757-2873 | Fax: 651-757-2343

February 17, 2021 Meeting Location: Virtual via WebEx https://minnesota.webex.com/minnesota/onstage/g.php?MTID=ea9e0199cef84ed743391b742b205540d 1:00 pm – 4:00 pm

AGENDA

Meeting Time and Location In light of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Environmental Quality Board (EQB or Board) will convene its February Board meeting virtually through the WebEx platform. To access the meeting, use the link under the “Meeting Location” above.

Instructions for joining the meeting via WebEx are included on page 5 of this packet.

Accessibility: This material can be provided in different forms, like large print, braille, or on a recording. Please contact EQB staff at least one week prior to the event at [email protected] to arrange an accommodation.

Public Engagement Opportunities at EQB Meetings EQB encourages public input and appreciates the opportunity to build shared understanding with members of the public. During the February Board meeting, members of the public will have the opportunity to contribute questions, comments, and ideas via the online platform Slido. Slido login details are provided below.

Meeting Objectives • Elect an EQB Vice Chairperson • Discuss findings from Jill Lindsey Harrison’s book From the Inside Out: The Fight for Environmental Justice within Government Agencies • Review updates to the Environmental Quality Board work plan EQB packet page - 2

Agenda:

I. *Adoption of Consent Agenda & Minutes Proposed Agenda for February 17th, 2021 Board Meeting November 18, 2020 Meeting Minutes

II. EQB Welcome & Introductions Laura Bishop EQB Chair Commissioner – Minnesota Pollution Control Agency

EQB Members Margaret Anderson Kelliher; Commissioner – Department of Transportation Grace Arnold; Commissioner – Department of Commerce Kristen Eide-Tollefson; Public Member – Congressional District 2 Alan Forsberg; Public Member – Congressional District 1 Julie Goehring; Public Member – Congressional District 7 Steve Grove; Commissioner – Department of Employment and Economic Development Mehmet Konar-Steenberg; Public Member – Congressional District 5 Jan Malcolm; Commissioner – Department of Health Nicholas Martin; Public Member – Congressional District 4 Bryan Murdock; Commissioner – Congressional District 8 Thom Petersen; Commissioner – Department of Agriculture Alice Roberts-Davis; Commissioner – Department of Administration Sarah Strommen; Commissioner – Department of Natural Resources Gerald Van Amburg; Chair – Board of Water and Soil Resources Benjamin Yawakie; Public Member – Congressional District 3

III. Executive Director’s Report Katie Pratt Executive Director Environmental Quality Board [email protected]

IV. **Elect EQB Vice Chair The EQB has authority to elect a Vice Chairperson. The Vice Chairperson is responsible for chairing board meetings in the absence of the Chairperson.

* Items requiring discussion may be removed from the Consent Agenda ** Denotes action may be taken EQB packet page - 3

V. From the Inside Out: The Fight for Environmental Justice within Government Agencies Jill Lindsey Harrison, author of From the Inside Out: The Fight for Environmental Justice within Government Agencies, will present to the EQB on findings from the book.

Book Overview In From the Inside Out: The Fight for Environmental Justice within Government Agencies (MIT Press, 2019), Harrison examines the disappointing pace of environmental regulatory agencies’ “environmental justice” (EJ) programs and policies as a case through which to understand why, despite reducing air and water pollution for the nation overall, government has not protected the communities who suffer the most. Other scholars have shown that budget cuts, industry pressure, and other factors outside the control of agency staff constrain the possibilities for EJ reforms to regulatory practice. This book shows that agencies’ EJ efforts are also undermined by elements of regulatory workplace culture. Through extensive interviews with and observations of staff at numerous environmental regulatory agencies across the United States, Harrison shows that agencies’ EJ efforts are also undermined by everyday ways in which well-meaning staff dedicated to environmental regulation reject EJ reforms as violating what they think their organization does and should do. A rare glimpse inside environmental regulatory agencies, these findings help explain the shortcomings of environmental regulation and policy implementation today. It also shows how agencies’ EJ staff – those tasked with developing EJ reforms – endeavor to change both regulatory practice and regulatory culture from the inside out. (Link to the publisher: https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/inside-out)

About the Author Jill Lindsey Harrison (PhD, University of California at Santa Cruz, 2006) is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Colorado Boulder. Her research focuses on environmental sociology, sociology of agriculture and food systems, environmental justice, and political theories of justice, with a regional emphasis on the United States. She has used her research on political conflict over agricultural pesticide poisonings in California, recent escalations in immigration enforcement in rural Wisconsin, and government agencies’ environmental justice efforts to help identify and explain the persistence of environmental inequalities and workplace inequalities in the United States today. In addition to numerous articles and chapters, she published Pesticide Drift and the Pursuit of Environmental Justice (MIT Press, 2011), which won book awards from the Rural Sociological Society and the Association of Humanist Sociology, and From the Inside Out: The Fight for Environmental Justice within Government Agencies (MIT Press, 2019), which received Honorable Mention for the 2020 Allan Schnaiberg Outstanding Publication Award from the American Sociological Association’s Section on Environmental Sociology.

Presenters: Jill Lindsey Harrison Associate Professor, Associate Chair of Undergraduate Studies University of Colorado-Boulder [email protected] EQB packet page - 4

Materials enclosed: • Flyer - From the Inside Out: The Fight for Environmental Justice within Government Agencies – EQB packet page number 12 • Sections - From the Inside Out: The Fight for Environmental Justice within Government Agencies – EQB packet page number 14

VI. Question & Answer Session for Jill Lindsey Harrison Board members and members of the public will have an opportunity to ask question of the author.

Members of the public will be prompted to ask questions through the online platform Slido. To access the platform, please visit Slido [https://www.sli.do] and enter the event code “EQBFEB21.”

VII. EQB Work Plan EQB Executive Director Katie Pratt will discuss strategic objectives, actions, and key projects that EQB staff will focus on for the upcoming year and seek feedback from the Board.

Members of the public are invited to offer ideas and feedback via the online platform Slido. To access the platform, please visit Slido [https://www.sli.do] and enter the event code “EQBFEB21.”

Presenters: Katie Pratt Executive Director Environmental Quality Board [email protected]

Materials enclosed: • FY20-21 work plan update – EQB packet page number 111

VIII. Closing Remarks

IX. Adjourn EQB packet page - 5

EQB Guide to Participating in WebEx Meetings

If you have any questions or technical difficulties regarding the Board meeting or WebEx, please contact EQB staff at (651) 757-2873.

Contents • Connecting to WebEx • Submitting Written Comment (Written Comments will be included in the subsequent Board Packet) • Troubleshooting your connection

Connecting to WebEx

Step 1: Join WebEx through the provided link found on our website or public meeting notification through GovDelivery.

Step 2: Input your name and email address, then select join. EQB packet page - 6

Step 3: This will prompt you to register for the meeting by confirming your email address, after confirming, select “Submit”

Step 4: If you have not already used WebEx before, follow the prompts to download the plug-in for your web browser. This typically does not take long, but be sure to budget time in advanced to connect to the meeting. EQB packet page - 7

Step 5: Configure your Audio and Video Connection, if you wish to use your computer’s microphone and camera, select “Call Using Computer.” If you prefer to connect by phone you can either call in or have the WebEx system call a number that you provide.

Note: you will be muted upon entry to the conference call. If you are joining audio by phone, you will only be able to unmute through your computer.

If you wish to submit written public comment Note: Written comments will not be visible to the Board in real time. They will be included in the subsequent Board packet.

Step 1: Open the chat clicking the chat bubble icon.

Step 2: Then in the chat box, select “Environmental Quality Board (Host)” to submit your written public comment. EQB packet page - 8

Troubleshooting your Connection If you have any questions or technical difficulties regarding the Board meeting or WebEx, please contact EQB staff at (651) 757-2873.

Having trouble with hearing or speaking? Try joining by phone.

Step 1: Open Step 2: Select the options by “Audio Connection” selecting the in the menu. three dots icon.

Step 3: Select “Switch Connection.”

Step 4: Press “I will call in” to get unique call in information for your phone’s connection. EQB packet page - 9

MINNESOTA ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY BOARD MEETING MINUTES

November 18, 2020; 1:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m. Meeting Location: Virtual via WebEx

Members Present: Margaret Anderson Kelliher, Grace Arnold, Laura Bishop, Kristen Eide-Tollefson, Alan Forsberg, Julie Goehring, Nicholas Martin, Bryan Murdock, Thom Petersen, Alice Roberts-Davis, Sarah Strommen, Gerald Van Amburg, Sue Vento, Benjamin Yawakie

Members Absent: Steve Grove, Jan Malcolm Activity Video*

I. Adoption of Consent Agenda & Minutes 00:00:00

II. EQB Welcome & Introductions 00:01:20

III. Executive Director’s Report 00:04:24 Executive Director Katie Pratt announced the upcoming EQB meeting schedule with unique addition of an “open house” prior to the December ERIS meeting that serves as an additional opportunity for public dialogue on materials that will be covered in depth at the December ERIS meeting.

IV. Feasibility of Solar Development on State-Managed Closed Landfills Report: Review and 00:09:26 Approval EQB staff Faith Krogstad and MPCA staff Hans Neve introduced and gave a presentation on the report developed to assess Feasibility of Solar Development on State-Managed Closed Landfills. After Board discussion, the resolution to approve the report was passed. The voting record for today’s agenda items can be found on the next page.

V. Public Comment on Agenda Item IV 00:53:00

VI. Final Review and Approval of 2020 Minnesota State Agency Pollinator Report and 01:10:15 Discussion of Civic Engagement Framework for Pollinator Protection EQB staff Rebeca Gutierrez-Moreno presented highlights from the 2020 Minnesota State Agency Pollinator Report and the Civic Engagement Framework for Pollinator Protection – seeking approval of the 2020 State Agency Pollinator Report. After public and Board member dialogue, the resolution to approve the report was passed. The voting record for today’s agenda items can be found on the next page.

VII. Public Comment on Agenda Item VI 01:43:30

VIII. Closing Remarks 02:24:45

* Video recording and presentations of November 18th meeting reside on the EQB website: https://www.eqb.state.mn.us/content/november-18-2020-environmental-quality-board-meeting EQB packet page - 10 EQB MEETING VOTING RECORI)

DATE

AGENDA ITEM: ) ieu) ro MOVED BY:

SECONDED BY:

BOARD MEMBER VOTING AYE VOTING NAY NOT PRESENT

ANDERSON KELLIHER, M. .4 ARNOLD, Grace f BISHOP, Laura g EIDE-TOLLEFSON, Kristen Z FORSBERG, Alan v GOEHRING, Julie V

GROVE, Steve t MALCOLM, Jan -7 W MARTIN, Nicholas MURDOCK, Bryan V PETERSEN, Thom V ROBERTS-DAVIS, Alice -Y STROMMEN, Sarah u_ VAN AMBURG, Gerald L YAWAKIE, BCN \/

Notes: EQB packet page - 11 EQB MEETING VOTING RECORD

DATE:

AGENDA ITEM: l?,1 t/waf"t Pef,rt-/' MOVED BY:

SECONDED BY:

BOARD MEMBER VOTING AYE VOTING NAY NOT PRESENT

ANDERSON KELLIHER, M. t/

ARNOLD, Grace ,./

BISHOP, Laura

EIDE-TOLLEFSON, Kristen \,/

FORSBERG, Alan V

GOEHRING, Julie V \-/ GROVE, Steve

MALCOLM, Jan \-/"

MARTIN, Nicholas ,'

MURDOCK, Bryan \,/

PETERSEN, Thom t/ ROBERTS-DAVIS, Alice e STROMMEN, Sarah V

VAN AMBURG, Gerald \,/ \./ YAWAKIE, BCN

Notes: EQB packet page - 12

FROM THE INSIDE OUT BY JILL LINDSEY HARRISON

THIS BOOK ADDRESSES THE FOLLOWING QUESTIONS:

What have government agencies’ environmental justice reform efforts entailed, and which reforms are still needed?

What challenges do government agencies face in implementing environmental justice reforms?

KEY TAKE-AWAYS - America’s poorest communities suffer disproportionate harm from environmental hazards, with higher exposure to pollution and higher incidences of lead poisoning, cancer, asthma, and other diseases linked to environmental illness. - Agencies’ environmental justice reform efforts are stymied by resource constraints, concerns about regulatory authority and industry pressure, as well as ways in which regulatory agency staff reject environmental justice reforms as irreconcilable with what their agencies’ priorities are and should be.

THE PROBLEM - Hundreds of academic studies have shown that working-class, racially marginalized, and Native American communities are not as well protected by environmental legislation and regulatory enforcement as other Americans. These communities endure not only substandard housing, crumbling infrastructure, and underfunded public education, but also higher exposures to toxic pollution, weaker enforcement of environmental laws, and access to fewer parks and playgrounds. They are disproportionately vulnerable (or “susceptible”) to the effects of exposure to those hazards because of racism, poverty, linguistic isolation, and/or other social factors. These communities have disproportionately high rates of lead poisoning, cancer, asthma, and other diseases that experts have linked to environmental hazards. - Environmental justice is the principle that government agencies must implement environmental justice reforms across agency practice that will reduce environmental hazards in the most vulnerable and overburdened communities, reduce inequality across communities, and ensure members of those communities have greater control over government decision-making that affects their lives. - Various laws, policies, and orders direct federal agencies to implement EJ reforms, including Executive Order 12898, the National Environmental Policy Act, the Civil Rights Act, and agency regulations prohibiting both intentional discrimination and unintended discriminatory effects of regulatory practice. In many states, executive orders, legislative policies, strategic plans, and/or administrative orders direct agencies to reform agency practices in line with EJ principles.

RESEARCH METHODS - From 2011 to 2019, Harrison conducted confidential, semi-structured interviews with nearly 100 current or former staff from environmental regulatory agencies, more than 50 hours of participant observation of agency meetings (both open and closed-door), and interviews with 50 EJ advocates from non-governmental organizations. - Study sites included U.S. EPA (including EPA headquarters, eight of its regional offices, and one other satellite office), U.S. Department of Justice, U.S. Department of the Interior, seven state environmental regulatory agencies, and several city or county agencies. EQB packet page - 13 ABOUT FROM THE INSIDE OUT Many state and federal environmental regulatory agencies in the United States have created formal EJ policies, convened EJ advisory committees, developed public participation guidelines, developed EJ screening tools to identify communities that are environmentally overburdened and socially vulnerable, and hired “EJ staff” who educate coworkers about environmental inequality, propose ways to integrate EJ principles throughout agency practice, and collaborate with coworkers to implement those proposals. These valuable EJ reform initiatives reflect years of hard work by EJ-supportive staff and EJ activists who advise them.

Yet agencies’ EJ efforts still fall far short of key EJ principles. Notably, EJ reforms are not institutionalized into the core regulatory work of permitting, rulemaking, and enforcement in ways that would systematically reduce cumulative impacts in overburdened and vulnerable communities or create greater environmental equity across communities. They also lack adequate accountability measures and in some cases may undermine critical EJ advocacy. As agency staff and scholars have emphasized, agencies’ abilities to address environmental inequalities are limited by material factors beyond the control of agency staff: resources constraints, pressure from regulated entities, uncertain legal authority to implement EJ reforms, and underdeveloped analytical tools. Yet Harrison shows that agencies do have sufficient resources, regulatory authority, and analytical tools to implement EJ reforms to a greater extent than they have to date. Thus, these explanations, while not inaccurate, are not complete.

From the Inside Out details how the slow pace of EJ policy implementation stems also from the ways staff themselves understand their responsibilities and respond to EJ staff members’ proposals for change. Some staff outright reject proposed EJ reforms, such as by insisting that they violate what it means for their organization to be impartial, that environmental inequalities are not serious, or that their organization’s effectiveness be measured in other, more aggregated, ways. Additionally, many staff ignore EJ staff members’ recommendations or implement them only superficially. Through these and other practices, some staff define “environmental justice” as conflicting with their ideas of good environmental regulatory practice. This resistance has transcended changes in elected officials and their varying degrees of support for EJ reforms.

Clearly, agency staff members’ work is highly constrained by resource limitations, environmental law, and other factors largely outside their control. They work hard and often feel that they have little room to maneuver. How- ever, staff also have discretion over how to do various tasks and hold ideas about the right and best ways to do their work. In enacting that discretion and their commitments, staff often undermine those trying to develop EJ reforms to regulatory practice.

From the Inside Out concludes with specific suggestions for how agencies can more effectively reduce environmental inequalities that deeply affect the lives of so many Americans.

JILL LINDSEY HARRISON Jill Lindsey Harrison is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Colorado Boulder. She is also author of Pesticide Drift and the Pursuit of Environmental Justice (MIT Press). [email protected] / www.colorado.edu/sociology/jill-harrison

FIND THE BOOK: MITPRESS.MIT.EDU/BOOKS/INSIDE-OUT **Link to Publisher: https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/inside-outEQB packet page - 14 EQB packet page - 15

Urban and Industrial Environments Series editor: Robert Gottlieb, Henry R. Luce Professor of Urban and Environmental Policy, Occidental College

For a complete list of books published in this series, please see the back of the book. EQB packet page - 16

From the Inside Out

The Fight for Environmental Justice within Government Agencies

Jill Lindsey Harrison

The MIT Press Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England EQB packet page - 17

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher.

This book was set in Stone Serif and Stone Sans by Westchester Publishing Ser vices. Printed and bound in the United States of America.

Library of Congress Cataloging- in-Publication Data is available.

Names: Harrison, Jill Lindsey, 1975- author. Title: From the inside out : the fight for environmental justice within government agencies / Jill Lindsey Harrison. Description: Cambridge, MA : The MIT Press, 2019. | Series: Urban and industrial environments | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2019001210 | ISBN 9780262537742 (pbk. : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Environmental justice- -Governmental policy- - United States. | Environmental policy- - United States. | Administrative agencies- - United States- - Decision making. Classification: LCC GE230 .H37 2019 | DDC 363.7/05610973-- dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019001210

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 EQB packet page - 18

Contents

Preface xi Acknowledgments xv

1 Introduction 1 2 Government Agencies’ Environmental Justice Efforts: Review and Critical Assessment 33 3 “It Is Out of Our Hands”: The Standard Narrative 55 4 “We Do Ecology, Not Sociology”: Staff Narratives That Undermine EJ 83 5 Other Ways Bureaucrats Undermine Proposed EJ Reforms 119 6 Explaining Bureaucrats’ Resistance to EJ Reforms 143 7 EJ Staff Members’ Definitions of Environmental Justice 169 8 Conclusion 197

Appendix: Study Design and Research Methods 221 Notes 247 References 251 Index 291 EQB packet page - 19

1 Introduction

The Environmental Justice (EJ) movement is composed of people from communities of color, indigenous communities, and working-class communities who are focused on combating environmental injustice—the disproportionate burden of environmental harm facing these populations. For the EJ movement, social justice is inseparable from environmental protection. — David Naguib Pellow (2018, 2)

Our most successful tool has been building relationships with government. … We know our way there now. Never underestimate the relationships with people in government. We are living in a difficult time. But not an impossible time. — Luis Olmedo from EJ organization Comité Cívico del Valle

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the state- level environmental regulatory agencies it supports curb the harms of industrial growth in ways that other actors will not and cannot do— neither industry, with its focus on profits, nor individuals and environmental organizations, who lack the power to force polluters to act. Environmental and other civil rights protections have been under attack for as long as they have existed, and the Trump administration has accelerated this assault to an unparalleled degree. It has instituted racist immigration policies that further scapegoat certain immigrant groups and tear families apart, condoned white suprem- acist violence, eviscerated health care policy, and rolled back protections for transgender people. Its attack on environmental protections has been particularly pronounced: pulling out of the Paris Climate Agreement, rolling back the Clean Power Plan and dozens of other environmental regulations, approving the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines, reversing the EPA’s own ban on the neurotoxic pesticide chlorpyrifos, shrinking the size of EQB packet page - 20 2 Chapter 1

wildlife refuges and National Monuments held as sacred by Native Ameri- can tribes and opening those lands to oil and gas development, stacking EPA science advisory boards with industry representatives, prohibiting government analysts from using many independent scientific studies, remov- ing contaminated sites from the Superfund list, and cutting grants that help fund state and tribal regulatory agencies (Bomberg 2017; Davenport 2017b, 2018a, 2018b; Dillon et al. 2018; Eilperin and Cameron 2018; ELI 2018; Federman 2018; Fredrickson et al. 2018; Gustin 2017; Harvard Law School 2018; Leber 2018; Paris et al. 2017; PEER 2017; Popovich, Albeck- Ripka, and Pierre- Louis 2018; Sellers et al. 2017; Shear 2017; Turkewitz 2017; UCS 2018, 2019). These moves to weaken the agency have enraged environmental advocates and EPA staff alike (Dillon et al. 2018; Fredrickson et al. 2018; Paris et al. 2017; Sellers et al. 2017; UCS 2018). In uncharacteristic political activism, some EPA staff publicly protested the nomination of Scott Pruitt to EPA administrator (Davenport 2017a; Sellers et al. 2017), hundreds of former EPA staff wrote a scathing letter of protest and formed activist organizations to defend the agency (Davenport 2017a; Gardner 2017; Save EPA 2017), staff have resigned in protest of the Trump administration and its practices (e.g., Friedman, Affo, and Kravitz 2017), and staff surreptitiously inform journalists and researchers about controversial pending reforms. While these budget cuts and promises to shrink EPA’s authority will harm all Americans, they are especially problematic for working- class, racially marginalized, and Native American communities, who have scarcely benefitted from the environmental protections that legislation and regulatory enforcement afford to many people. These communities endure not only substandard housing, crumbling infrastructure, and underfunded public education, but also higher exposures to toxic pollution, weaker enforcement of environmental laws, and access to fewer parks and playgrounds. They also have disproportionately high rates of lead poisoning, cancer, asthma, and other diseases that experts have linked to environmental hazards. EPA and other environmental regulatory agencies do important work—but they have never protected all people equally. Such environmental inequalities gain the public’s attention in particularly acute moments, such as Hurricane Katrina in 2005, which showed Americans that working- class black communities are not as protected from natural disasters as their wealthier white neighbors. Government agencies EQB packet page - 21 Introduction 3

failed to aid working- class and racially marginalized residents desperately in need of help during the floods, the media used racist stereotypes in por- traying black residents as lawless and violent, and recovery efforts fell short of meeting communities’ basic needs and in some cases harmed them further (Allen 2007; Pastor et al. 2006; Sze 2006; Tierney, Bevc, and Kuligowski 2006). Similarly, the water contamination crisis in the predominantly black and working- class city of Flint, Michigan, reveals racial and class disparities in access to clean drinking water. Government mismanagement of the city’s drinking water caused at least a hundred thousand people to be exposed to lead at levels known to cause brain damage, learning disabilities, and behavioral problems; 200 or more fetal deaths; and at least a dozen people to be killed by Legionnaires’ disease (Flint Water Advisory Task Force 2016; Ingraham 2017; Michigan Civil Rights Commission 2017). Far from out- liers, these cases exemplify conditions that characterize everyday life for racially marginalized, Native American, and working-class communities across America, and that contribute to vast racial and class inequalities in illness and death. This book sheds new light on why government agencies, essential for providing certain services that industry and individuals will not or cannot provide, allow these grossly unfair and devastating inequalities to persist. These environmental inequalities are the focus of the U.S. environmental justice (EJ) movement. Working at the intersection of the environmental and civil rights movements, grassroots EJ advocates argue that justice requires that the state reduce environmental hazards in the most vulnerable and overburdened communities and that members of those communities have more control over government decision- making. The U.S. EPA and numerous state-level agencies establish acceptable industrial practices and pollution levels, assign permits to restrict the pollution of industry and other actors, enforce environmental laws and regulations, monitor air and water quality, clean up contaminated sites, and help fund state and tribal agencies’ environmental programs. Many have responded to EJ movement pressure by adopting EJ policies and hiring “EJ staff” tasked with proposing EJ reforms to regulatory practice. Yet, although EJ advocates and agencies’ EJ staff have proposed and fought hard for many important regulatory reforms that could protect overburdened and vulnerable communities from dangerous environmental hazards, agencies have institutionalized few of them. EQB packet page - 22 4 Chapter 1

This book lifts the veil on the U.S. EPA and its state- level environmental regulatory agency counterparts, examining the challenges faced by their staff who fight for EJ reforms to regulatory practice as a way to gain new insights into why these agencies fail to reduce harmful toxics and other hazards in our nation’s most overburdened communities. It shows that, to understand why agencies have allowed environmental inequalities to persist, we must go inside and talk to bureaucrats within them. Other scholars have emphasized that material factors outside the control of agency staff— budget cuts, limits to regulatory authority, industry pressure, and underdeveloped analytical tools—constrain the possibilities for EJ reforms. This book builds upon that work by demonstrating that agencies’ EJ efforts are also undermined by elements of regulatory workplace culture that transcend institutions and changes in administration. Specifically, through extensive interviews with and observations of staff at numerous environmental regulatory agencies, I show that agencies’ EJ efforts have also long been undermined by ways in which staff defend what they think the goals and priorities should be of the organizations they work for and to which they feel very committed—with some staff outright rejecting proposed EJ reforms, and others promoting “environmental justice” in principle but in ways that deviate from key tenets of the EJ movement. That is, the disappointing pace of agencies’ EJ efforts stems not only from hostile acts of conservative political elites and industry pressure to deregulate, but also from everyday practices through which some staff, in reacting to proposed EJ reforms, define how these institutions should best protect public health and the environment. By exploring these interacting factors, this book exposes how, at all levels of government, agencies are failing to keep some communities safe, despite the concerted efforts of their EJ-supportive staff, EJ advocates, and the communities they fight for. It also shows how, despite these constraints, EJ staff and their EJ-supportive colleagues fight for environmental justice by trying to change both regulatory practice and regulatory culture from the inside out. As activists, scholars, bureaucrats, and the public strive to defend environmental regulatory protections and rebuild them in the coming years, we have an opportunity to re-envision our government institutions’ commitments and priorities. To protect our most overburdened and vulnerable communities, we cannot restore our environmental regulatory system to its previous form. The fight for environmental justice—and social justice EQB packet page - 23 Introduction 5

broadly— requires that we craft government institutions that systematically reduce inequalities and dismantle the structures of oppression that uphold them. This book aims to help inform the resistance against unjust political elites and their attacks on human rights by providing a set of concrete recommendations for crafting a future environmental regulatory regime that is both strong and just.

Environmentalism and the Environmental Justice Movement

In interviews with me, and as other scholars have documented, EPA and other environmental regulatory agency staff express deep pride in their work, their agency, its accomplishments, and the role of environmental regulation in protecting public health and the environment (Mintz 2012; Pautz and Rinfret 2011, 2014; Rinfret and Pautz 2013; Robertson 2010; Tay- lor 1984). Environmental legislation and regulation played a key role in reducing certain forms of air and water pollution in the United States. For example, since 1990, national ambient concentrations of lead improved by 85 percent, carbon monoxide by 84 percent, sulfur dioxide by 67 percent, and nitrogen dioxide by 60 percent (EPA 2017c), dramatically curtailing Americans’ risks of death and illness from exposure to these hazards. Yet these aggregate improvements mask a landscape of remarkable environmental inequality, where some communities are overburdened with pollution, hazardous facilities, dilapidated infrastructure, and other environmental harms. Community organizations around the country have protested the hazards within their neighborhoods, condemning the fact that environmental problems are not distributed randomly or evenly but instead are disproportionately clustered in working- class, racially marginalized, and Native American communities. The environmental justice movement today encompasses all of these organizations. Many EJ activists are personally and immediately affected by environmental hazards, and they draw connections between these hazards and patterns of illness they have observed in their families, workplaces, schools, and neighborhoods. They are angry at polluters for exploiting their communities and at government agencies and mainstream environmental organizations for ignoring their concerns and conditions. They have formed hundreds of community- based EJ organizations across the United States and work in alliances with scientists, attorneys, and other supporters. EQB packet page - 24 6 Chapter 1

EJ activism is part of a long history of struggle against racist oppression in the United States (Taylor 2014a). Such struggle gained momentum during the civil rights movement, as illustrated, for example, in conflict over a hazardous waste dump in Warren County, North Carolina, in 1982. State officials there sought a location for disposing of soil contaminated with polychlorinated biphenyls. Officials selected a site in the poorest county in the state and the one with the highest percentage of black residents, despite the fact that its shallow water table and residents’ reliance on local wells for drinking water made the town an environmentally terrible choice. Resi- dents, outraged at the discriminatory siting decision, protested the landfill and were ultimately joined by members of national civil rights organizations in physically blocking the waste-loaded trucks from being able to enter the site. This protest, in which more than five hundred people were arrested for acts of civil disobedience, was the first time anyone in U.S. history had been jailed for trying to halt a toxic waste landfill. EJ activists’ fights for improved environmental conditions in the most overburdened and vulnerable communities also include immigrant farmworkers’ fights for stronger pesticide regulations. Activists emphasize that industry coerces agencies to weaken pesticide regulations, while poverty, legal status issues, and racism impede farmworkers and their families in reporting pesticide exposures and result in them not being taken seriously when they do (Harrison 2011; Pulido 1996). EJ activism also includes working- class white Appalachian communities’ battles against mountain- top- removal coal mining, in which activists emphasize how the coal industry pressures the state to allow mining practices that destroy rivers and livelihoods while residents, lacking other employment opportunities, feel unable to criticize it (Bell 2016). Additionally, EJ activists fight against food insecurity rampant in working- class communities and for food justice, the right of all people to accessible, affordable, nutritious, and culturally appropriate food (Gottlieb and Joshi 2010). And furthermore, EJ activism includes the climate justice movement, whose members condemn the ways Indigenous communities in the Arctic and low- income communities in the global south have been forced to bear the burden of the climatic changes destroying their homes and livelihoods for which they bear little responsibility (Ciplet, Roberts, and Khan 2015). Conflicts over the Dakota Access Pipeline in North Dakota at Stand- ing Rock in 2016 and 2017 are a recent case of EJ activism, where Native Americans sought to protect their water resources and sacred sites from EQB packet page - 25 Introduction 7

a new oil pipeline. Activists criticized the fact that the pipeline had been rerouted away from the predominantly white city of Bismarck to protect its drinking water, as well as the fact that U.S. government agencies used mili- tary violence, violated tribal sovereignty, and ignored due process to foster pipeline construction (Hayes 2016; Petrella and Loggins 2016). EJ activist organizations are largely grassroots and tend to embrace cross- class and multiracial alliances. Some have formed regional EJ networks and other EJ coalitions to more effectively share resources and shape state and federal policy (Bullard 1990; Cole and Foster 2001; Faber 1998; Gottlieb 2005; Hofrichter 1993; Pezzullo and Sandler 2007a,b). Importantly, the 1991 First National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit, where participants adopted 17 “Principles of Environmental Justice,” helped the bud- ding EJ movement gain coherence and identity (Principles 1991). Numerous subsequent EJ conferences have further helped EJ advocates build alliances with each other and their supporters in academia and elsewhere. EJ activists have been strongly influenced by the civil rights movement, the labor movement, grassroots anti- toxics activism, and struggles for Native American sovereignty (Cole and Foster 2001). EJ activists’ use of marches, protests, and other direct action reflects the tactics of these “tribu- tary” movements (Cole and Foster 2001). As much as EJ activists can be understood as part of the environmental movement, they are also deeply critical of mainstream environmental organizations for focusing on protection of endangered species, wilderness areas, and other environmental concerns of the relatively wealthy; ignoring the environmental knowledge of and environmental harms borne disproportionately by working-class, racially marginalized, and Native American communities; using tactics that often directly harm marginalized people; and doing little to diversify their own leadership and staff (Brulle 2000; Cole and Foster 2001; Di Chiro 1996, 1998; Gottlieb 2005; Pezzullo and Sandler 2007a,b; Taylor 2000, 2014b).

Scope and Roots of Environmental Inequalities

Environmental inequalities research has helped substantiate and investigate EJ activists’ concerns and convictions. Scholarship has overwhelmingly demonstrated that environmental problems are highest in low-income communities, communities with a high percentage of racially marginalized residents, and those that are highly racially segregated (e.g., Ard 2015, EQB packet page - 26 8 Chapter 1

2016; Bullard et al. 2007; Bullock, Ard, and Saalman 2018; Campbell, Peck, and Tschudi 2010; Clark, Millet, and Marshall 2014; Crowder and Downey 2010; Downey 2006; Downey and Hawkins 2008; Faber and Kreig 2002; Grant et al. 2010; Grineski and Collins 2018; Liévanos 2015; Liévanos and Horne 2017; Mikati et al. 2018; Mohai, Pellow, and Roberts 2009a, Mohai et al. 2009b, 2011; Mohai and Saha 2007, 2015; Pastor, Sadd, and Hipp 2001; Taylor 2014a; WHO 2016a).1 Additionally, scholars have demonstrated race- and class- based disparities in government agencies’ enforcement of environmental laws (Konisky and Schario 2010; Pulido 2015). Scholars have shown that environmental inequalities have remained persistent over time (Ard 2015) and contribute to racial and socioeconomic disparities in health and educational attainment (Mohai et al. 2011; Morello-Frosch and Jesdale 2006; Morello- Frosch et al. 2011). These findings are conservative, undoubtedly underestimating the scope and severity of environmental inequalities. Massive gaps in scientific knowledge limit researchers’ abilities to definitively link many illnesses to environmental harms. We know very little about the industrial history of lands converted to residential and other urban uses, the extent of various illnesses, the causal links between illnesses and environmental hazards, the full range of physiological and psychological effects of exposure to most hazards, how actually existing mixtures of hazards affect human bodies, and how those effects vary among people given the diversity of activity patterns, stress levels, and other factors known to affect our responses to environmental hazards (Brown 2007; Frickel and Elliott 2018; Langston 2010; Tesh 2001). Some have shown how standard scientific norms of proof and other key elements of regulatory science serve the interests of industry rather than the public (Brown 2007; Cordner 2016; Langston 2010; Nash 2006; O’Brien 2000; Raffensperger and Tickner 1999; Thornton 2000; Tickner 2003; Vogel 2012; Whiteside 2006). These inequalities stem from many factors. To some extent, environmental inequalities stem from the utilitarian nature of environmental governance in the United States, in which government has prioritized policies that provide the greatest net benefit for the population overall, irrespec- tive of how those benefits are distributed within society (Andrews 1999; S. Foster 2000; Harrison 2011, 2014; Harvey 1996; Low and Gleeson 1998). As EJ scholars Bob Bullard and colleagues have noted, “The mission of the federal EPA was never designed to address environmental policies and EQB packet page - 27 Introduction 9

practices that result in unfair, unjust and inequitable outcomes” (Bullard et al. 2007, 8). Environmental regulatory agencies’ progress is measured in utilitarian, aggregated measures (e.g., changes in the number of expected deaths from exposure to air pollution nationwide) (EPA 2017c). Indeed, the EJ movement is unique in insisting that the government be held accountable instead to its progress on reducing environmental inequality. Additionally, in working- class communities in which residents struggle to make ends meet, they lack the free time, scientific support, credibility, and other resources needed to fight powerful industries. Their elected officials feel compelled to welcome industrial development in exchange for jobs and tax revenues, despite the accompanying hazards— a dynamic Bul- lard (1992) characterizes as “environmental blackmail.” Also, fear of retaliation often makes workers reluctant to report or challenge environmental problems. These dynamics, as well as lower property values, make such communities attractive to hazardous industries (Mohai and Saha 2015). The clustering of environmental problems in communities of color is also an enduring legacy of centuries of industry practices and government policies that have created residential segregation and systematically afforded material resources— from wealth to clean air—disproportionately to whites (Bonilla- Silva 2014; Lipsitz 1995, 2011; Mascarenhas 2016; Mohai and Saha 2015; Morello- Frosch 2002; Pulido 2000, 2015; Taylor 2014a). Some of these institutions are explicitly and unabashedly racist, including slavery, Jim Crow laws, and “redlining” and other racist lending practices. Others are less explicitly racist but effectively so, such as highway development projects, government urban “renewal” programs, weak environmental laws in occupational sectors largely employing immigrants and other racially marginalized groups, and uneven enforcement of environmental and civil rights laws. They also include employers’ racist hiring practices that allocate the best- paying jobs to whites, the U.S. government’s violation of treaties with Native American tribes that have whittled away res- ervations’ resources, immigration enforcement policies that target certain racially marked groups and leave them afraid to report environmental or other social problems, and racist housing covenants that enabled whites to exclude people of color and environmental hazards alike from their subur- ban enclaves (Huber 2013; Pulido 2000). Scholars have long shown that environmental problems stem from the fact that U.S. environmental regulatory agencies have been subject to EQB packet page - 28 10 Chapter 1

“capture” by the industries they are charged with regulating (Brown 2007; Cordner 2016; Davidson and Frickel 2004; Downey 2015; Faber 2008, 2018; J. B. Foster 2000; Freudenburg and Gramling 1994; Harvey 2005; Langston 2010; Layzer 2012; Mintz 2012; Nash 2006; O’Brien 2000; O’Connor 1998; Raffensperger and Tickner 1999; Schnaiberg and Gould 1994; Thornton 2000; Tickner 2003; UCS 2008, 2018, 2019; Vogel 2012; Whiteside 2006). The “revolving door” of elites between industry and government agencies and associated regulatory capture have reached new heights in the current administration (Dillon et al. 2018; Fredrickson et al. 2018). Trump’s first EPA administrator, Scott Pruitt, stridently defended industry from government regulations as Oklahoma’s attorney general and, as EPA administrator, met consistently with industry and not with environmental NGOs (Buford 2017c; Davenport 2017b; Lipton and Friedman 2017a). Similarly, other top appointees in the agency have strong histories of defending industry and fighting environmental regulations (Henry 2017; Lipton 2017a). Although environmental inequalities have always existed, the neoliberal shift in environmental regulation and activism in recent decades has further rendered environmental and health protections a privilege largely available to the relatively wealthy. Since the 1980s, conservative elites have slashed the budgets for environmental regulation, health care, public education, and programs designed to help the unemployed and disabled; weak- ened environmental and labor regulations; cut corporate taxes; increasingly privatized prisons, drinking water systems, and other public services; and encouraged individuals to take responsibility for their own health through their shopping decisions, dietary habits, fitness regimens, and other personal behaviors (Auyero 2010; Bakker 2010; Brenner, Peck, and Theodore 2010; Centeno and Cohen 2012; Guthman 2011; Harrison 2014; Harvey 2005; Heynen et al. 2007; Lockie 2013; Mascarenhas 2012; Peck and Tickell 2002; Wacquant 2009). Neoliberal reforms across the state have been driven both by a belief that the best way to solve social problems is not through government intervention but instead through economic growth and free trade, as well as by racist resentment of civil rights protections and affirmative action programs that sought to extend the benefits of early twentieth- century New Deal- era programs to women and people of color (Harrison 2011, 2014; Hochschild 2016; Huber 2013; Omi and Winant 2015; Pulido 2015). Scholars have shown that this retrenchment renders government agencies less able to regulate polluters, leaves overburdened communities EQB packet page - 29 Introduction 11

more vulnerable to environmental harms, and absolves the state of responsibility for environmental and health problems. Many mainstream environmental organizations have accommodated this broader context by increasingly relying on neoliberal practices: shifting their own resources away from fighting for regulatory and policy reforms and increasingly advocating for private-sector “solutions” such as green consumerism and pollution markets like carbon cap- and- trade (pollution permit trading) systems (Faber 2008; Guthman 2008a; Harrison 2008, 2011, 2014; Heynen et al. 2007; London et al. 2013; McCarthy 2005; Park and Pellow 2011). At the same time, scholars have observed a neoliberaliza- tion of popular culture, in which everyday people vocally dismiss the state and instead advocate for and rely on voluntary, individual, charitable, and market- based measures to address their environmental concerns (Guthman 2008a, 2011; Maniates 2001; Szasz 2007). All of these trends leave environmental problems underregulated, especially for the vulnerable communities who bear the greatest burden of environmental problems and are unable to buy their way out of them.

Key Tenets of Environmental Justice

Within these contexts that create and reinforce environmental inequalities, EJ organizations have fought to improve environmental conditions in the most overburdened and vulnerable communities.2 Notwithstanding the complexity of ideas and practices within the EJ movement, EJ activist organizations have shared numerous overarching tenets that have cohered them as a movement. I draw these tenets from EJ advocates’ published declarations (e.g., Principles 1991; Michigan Environmental Justice Work Group Report 2018), my own observations of EJ advocacy, and scholars’ overviews of EJ activism (Benford 2005; Bullard 1990; Bullard et al. 2007; Cable and Shriver 1995; Capek 1993; Cole and Foster 2001; Di Chiro 1998; Faber 2008; Faber and McCarthy 2003; Holifield, Chakraborty, and Walker 2018; Low and Gleeson 1998; Pellow 2018; Pellow and Brulle 2005; Sand- weiss 1998; Schlosberg 2007; Shrader-Frechette 2002; Taylor 2000; Walker 2012). Although EJ advocacy has not always lived up to them, they constitute aspirational principles for what justice ultimately requires. Therefore, in this book, I use the following tenets to judge agencies’ EJ policies, programs, and practices. EQB packet page - 30 12 Chapter 1

First, environmental justice requires that the state protect the rights of all people to live free from environmental harm. While EJ activists use many tactics, they have insisted that justice requires pursuing change through regulatory and policy protections. EJ activists argue that freedom from environmental harm should be a right to be protected by the state, not a privilege available only to those with means to buy their way into safer environments. For example, in his now- classic treatise on the EJ movement, Dumping in Dixie (1990), scholar- activist Robert Bullard described trends in EJ mobilization, highlighted activists’ demand that environmental protections are rights to be guaranteed by the state, and articulated a model EJ framework that fore- grounds the pursuit of change through regulatory and policy protections (Bullard 1990, 113, 122). As Jonathan London and colleagues (London et al. 2013) emphasize, EJ advocacy rejects the neoliberal shift in environmentalism and environmental regulation for treating environmental protection as a commodity available only to those with means:

Environmental justice scholarship and social movements have launched critiques of the retrenchment of state regulation and the ascendency of market-based public policy as perpetuating unjust distributions of environmental hazards. … A pref- erence for public over private sector solutions by many environmental justice advocates derives from a relatively positive generational history of civil rights legislation and litigation on the one hand and the experience of being “dumped on” by corporations operating according to market logics on the other. … Advocates emphasize the importance of social movement pressure on the state apparatus to ensure alignment with environmental justice values and to regulate the market to reduce its structural inequities. (792, 795)

For these reasons, EJ advocates have argued that environmental justice requires reforming regulatory practice in line with EJ principles. These include race- conscious government policies to target and reduce racial environmental inequalities. To be sure, EJ advocacy in practice sometimes devi- ates from this tenet. Notably, whereas EJ advocacy historically has opposed neoliberal regulatory rollback and the associated reliance on market- based environmental change, I show in chapter 7 that some EJ activists have problematically abandoned this non- neoliberal stance. Second, EJ activists argue that government agencies and environmental organizations need to explicitly identify and prioritize environmental improvements in communities facing the greatest cumulative environmental impacts. Cumulative impacts are a function of both the full scope of environmental stressors a community faces (including environmental EQB packet page - 31 Introduction 13

hazards and any deficits in important environmental amenities such as parks and playgrounds) and the community’s vulnerability to harm from those stressors (including poverty, racism, and geographic isolation, which render the effects of exposure to environmental hazards more serious in some communities than others; see Cutter, Boruff, and Shirley 2003; EPA 2017k, 10– 19; NEJAC 2014; Solomon et al. 2016). These improvements will require reducing contamination, fostering community revitalization, and protecting against gentrification. Third, environmental justice requires reducing environmental inequality and other forms of material inequality. That is, in addition to reducing cumulative impacts in the most overburdened and vulnerable communities, justice also requires that environmental regulatory agencies create environmental equity among communities (also characterized as reducing environmental disparity or disproportionality of environmental harm). Other aspects of material inequality— such as those that pertain to wealth, health care, education, shelter, and food—are beyond the purview of environmental regulatory agencies and thus need to be addressed by other state institutions. This commitment to distributive justice sets EJ advocacy apart from the utilitarianism of mainstream environmental politics and guides EJ activists’ criticisms of environmental regulation (Harrison 2011, 2014). Fourth, EJ advocates have insisted that environmental justice requires making environmental decision- making processes more democratic. EJ activists have criticized the undemocratic nature of regulatory agencies’ decision- making processes, in which industry actors enjoy consistent access to and deferential treatment by regulators while community members’ participation is limited to points late in the decision- making process, their knowledge is often treated dismissively by state actors and industry representatives, and their input rarely changes regulatory outcomes. Strengthening public participation in environmental decision- making enables residents of marginalized communities and the organizations who represent their interests to monitor, analyze, and critically challenge proposed agency decisions. Community members and their advocates contribute valuable knowledge, ask questions experts have not been asking, point out data gaps, and raise critical questions about the ethical basis of standard scientific norms (Brown 2007; Brulle 2000; Cole and Foster 2001; Di Chiro 1998; Pezzullo and Sandler 2007a,b). This includes risk assessment, which, although typically communicated and conducted in technocratic ways, EQB packet page - 32 14 Chapter 1

warrants being conducted more democratically. Risk assessment requires many subjective decisions— such as how to account for data gaps, how to characterize the full array of risks to which communities are exposed, and how to resolve scientific disagreement (which can be frequent and significant). The fact that communities tend to conceptualize risk in very different terms than bureaucrats do underscores the point that assessing risk is not an objective exercise for which there is one correct answer (S. Foster 2000; Kuehn 1996; O’Brien 2000; O’Neill 2000; Tesh 2001; Whiteside 2006). Fifth, environmental justice requires that government agencies use the precautionary principle to more assertively reduce environmental problems (Brown 2007, 220–221; Faber 2008; Harrison 2011; Liévanos 2012; Morello- Frosch, Pastor, and Sadd 2002; NEJAC 2004; NJDEP EJAC 2009, 4; Sze and London 2008). This principle holds that, when current data and analytical techniques indicate that hazards likely pose serious risks to human health or the environment, agencies must take action to reduce those risks— even without full scientific certainty (O’Brien 2000; Raffensperger and Tickner 1999; Thornton 2000; Whiteside 2006). Precautionary principle advocates highlight the limits of risk assessment, asserting that regulatory agencies should strive to prevent pollution and find alternatives to harmful products and practices. Sixth, environmental justice requires economic and racial justice: challenging and breaking down structures of exploitation and oppression that produce unjust inequalities throughout social life. EJ advocates emphasize that environmental injustices stem from systems of economic inequality (manifest- ing as poverty, the racial wealth gap, labor exploitation, and consolidation of corporate power) and cultural oppression (including racism, sexism, and disregard for Native American communities’ sovereignty and rights). As Cole and Foster (2001) explain, many EJ activists “view environmental problems in their communities as connected to larger structural failings—inner- city disinvestment, residential segregation, lack of decent health care, jobless- ness, and poor education. Similarly, many activists also seek remedies that are more fundamental than simply stopping a local polluter or toxic dumper. Instead, many view the need for broader, structural reforms as a way to allevi- ate many of the problems, including environmental degradation, that their communities endure” (33). To be sure, the EJ movement has not been as anti- capitalist as some EJ scholars and some activists in other environmental movements (Pellow 2014, 2018; Pulido, Kohl, and Cotton 2016). That said, the anti- racist commitments of EJ activists and EJ scholars are rarely seen in EQB packet page - 33 Introduction 15

other environmental politics. They have explicitly lambasted racism within the mainstream environmental movement (Pezzullo and Sandler 2007a; Taylor 2014b), and, as I show throughout this book, EJ advocates within and beyond the state also decry racist ideology within regulatory agencies and its detrimental influence on agencies’ EJ reform efforts.

Government Agencies’ Efforts to Institutionalize Environmental Justice Principles

In 1993, in response to years of pressure from EJ activists and scholars, U.S. EPA created an Office of Environmental Equity (soon to be renamed the Office of Environmental Justice), and in 1994 President Clinton issued Executive Order 12898 (EO 12898) instructing all federal agencies to integrate EJ principles into regulatory practice (Clinton 1994a). While a few EJ- supportive staff from regulatory agencies helped advocate for the federal government’s official endorsements of environmental justice, agencies’ EJ efforts are widely understood as prompted largely by EJ advocates. Even EPA’s own “Environmental Justice” webpage introducing its EJ efforts situates key moments of federal EJ policies and programs in a timeline of the broader EJ movement (EPA 2017a). Since the early 1990s, EJ activists and scholars have celebrated the government’s official recognition of EJ while expressing considerable skepticism about its EJ efforts. That wariness is well justified, given the neoliberal backlash against environmental regulation and civil rights since the 1980s. Early critics noted that EJ at U.S. EPA was marginalized: situated in a small office and given few resources or authority over the rest of the agency. Yet agencies’ EJ efforts cannot be so easily dismissed these days. As I detail in chapter 2, many environmental regulatory agencies in the United States have started to adopt EJ policies, programs, and practices in response to EJ activism. The U.S. EPA has led such efforts, developing EJ programs and providing EJ guidance to federal, state, and tribal agencies, many of which have started to integrate EJ principles into their own policies, programs, and practices. Agencies undertaking EJ efforts have created formal EJ policies, convened EJ advisory committees, developed EJ trainings for staff, developed public participation guidelines to disseminate information more widely and solicit community input on regulatory decisions, and developed EJ screening tools to identify communities that are environmentally EQB packet page - 34 16 Chapter 1

overburdened and socially vulnerable. They hire “EJ staff” who educate coworkers about environmental inequality, propose ways to integrate EJ principles throughout agency practice, and collaborate with coworkers to implement those proposals. Additionally, a few agencies have funded cross-agency and multi- agency projects to reduce cumulative impacts in certain overburdened communities and establish models for systematically reforming regulatory work, created EJ grant programs allocating funds to community-based and tribal organizations, and started to develop EJ protocols for the core regulatory functions of permitting, enforcement, and rulemaking. EJ advocates inform these processes through agencies’ EJ advisory committees and public meetings, and occasionally by being hired to administer EJ programs. Even while advising agencies on EJ reforms and otherwise seeking regulatory protections from environmental harm, EJ activists’ stance toward the state is critical and confrontational. Indeed, they often describe their role as forcing the state to do things it is not committed to. Notwithstanding these valuable EJ reform initiatives that reflect years of hard work by EJ-supportive staff and EJ activists who advise them, agencies’ EJ efforts still fall far short of key EJ movement principles. Notably, EJ reforms are not institutionalized in ways that would systematically reduce cumulative impacts in overburdened and vulnerable communities or create greater environmental equity across communities. They also lack adequate accountability measures and in some cases may undermine critical EJ advocacy. Agencies’ EJ efforts improve environmental conditions in certain cases, create new ways for people in overburdened and marginalized communities to invest more time in the regulatory process, and establish valuable precedent needed to institutionalize EJ reforms throughout regulatory practice. However, agencies’ EJ efforts have, at this point, required few substantive concessions from industries that profit off of hazards and little meaningful, systematic change to the regulatory practices that authorize them to do so. After many years of hard work by agency EJ staff and their EJ-supportive coworkers, agencies’ efforts to implement EJ policies still fall far short of the expectations of the advocates who fought for them. Why has this happened? For staff trying to fight for environmental justice from the inside of these agencies, what constraints do they face? This book answers these questions, and in so doing offers new insights into why government agencies fail to keep our most vulnerable communities safe from environmental EQB packet page - 35 Introduction 17

harms. It also shows how EJ staff and their EJ-supportive colleagues endeavor to surmount these challenges and fight for environmental justice from the inside out.

Other Studies of EJ Policy Implementation

Other environmental justice scholars have contributed important insights into why, despite the hard work of some agency staff, government agencies’ EJ efforts fall so short of the principles of the EJ movement that fought for them. Some scholars take a political economic approach, emphasizing that elected officials have neutered EJ programs and restricted their funding due to industry hostility to the new regulatory restrictions those programs might bring (Eady 2003; Faber 2008; Gauna 2015; Gerber 2002; Liévanos 2012; Liévanos, London, and Sze 2011; London, Sze, and Liévanos 2008; Shilling, London, and Liévanos 2009). Such work situates agencies’ disappointing progress on EJ within the decades of neoliberal weakening of government protections for the environment, labor, and the poor. Others taking a legal studies approach highlight how court decisions and weak EJ policy undermine agencies’ EJ efforts by underspecifying their authority to implement more robust EJ reforms, failing to provide clear instructions for implementation, and directing staff to focus on practices that reflect nar- row interpretations of EJ (Cole 1999; Foster 2000; Gauna 2015; Holifield 2004, 2012; Konisky 2015a; Noonan 2015; Yang 2002). Scholars have also attributed agencies’ disappointing EJ efforts to technical limitations, such as the inadequacy of EJ analytical techniques that would more accurately identify the most environmentally burdened communities and the full scope of harms they face (Eady 2003; Gauna 2015; Holifield 2012, 2014; Payne- Sturges et al. 2012; Shadbegian and Wolverton 2015). This scholarship informs my own analysis. Indeed, all staff I interviewed identified these factors—limited resources, regulatory authority, and analytical tools— as constraints to EJ policy implementation. This set of explanations was so consistent that I refer to it as “the standard narrative” about why agencies’ EJ efforts fall short of meeting EJ advocates’ principles. In chapter 3, I detail these claims and show how these factors most certainly stymie agencies’ progress on EJ. Yet I also provide evidence that agencies could nevertheless do more to support environmental justice—and thus that something else is going on. That is, while the standard narrative is EQB packet page - 36 18 Chapter 1

not an inaccurate story about agencies’ EJ efforts, it also is not a complete one. In this book, I show that the slow progress of environmental regulatory agencies’ EJ efforts also stems from elements of regulatory workplace culture: practices through which agency staff, in responding to proposed EJ reforms, express their ideas about how things are done and should be done within these organizations. Drawing on popular notions of agencies’ goals, practices, and effectiveness, some staff reject proposed EJ reforms. At the same time, due to conflicting ideas about the best ways to pursue environmental justice, some agency staff promote “EJ” in principle but do so in ways that deviate from traditional tenets of the EJ movement. While the standard narrative suggests that the slow pace of agencies’ EJ efforts stems from factors beyond the control of agency staff, I show in this book that staff bear some responsibility for these outcomes. I also show how agencies’ EJ staff and their EJ- supportive peers work to confront and circumvent these constraints, though their marginalized and subordinated status makes this difficult.

Organization Theory: Institutional Logics and Resistance to Change

This book provides fresh insights into why environmental regulatory agencies, as a group of organizations, have institutionalized few substantive EJ reforms to regulatory practice in response to social movement pressure despite, in many cases, formal policy commitments to those social movement principles. Organization theorists’ studies of other organizational contexts provide useful insights into such outcomes. Like other organizations, environmental regulatory agencies are shaped by the organizational fields within which they are situated. Organizational fields are comprised of networks of actors that interact with organizations (including from industry, the state, and social movements), as well as institutional logics— widespread cognitive understandings of how things are done and normative positions about how things should function (Davis et al. 2005; DiMaggio and Powell 1983; Friedland and Alford 1991; Meyer and Rowan 1977; Scott 2014). Organizations often face competing institutional logics— “fragmented and contending institutional pressures,” which present ongoing tensions and challenges for organizations (Scott 2014, 182; see also Greenwood et al. 2011; Pache and Santos 2010, 2013). For example, social movement demands for regulatory and policy change often conflict EQB packet page - 37 Introduction 19

with industry expectations as well as bureaucrats’ own ideas about the government’s roles and responsibilities. Scholars have investigated and catego- rized organizations’ responses to such seemingly incompatible expectations (Greenwood et al. 2011; Pache and Santos 2010, 2013). Some organizations respond by symbolically legitimizing some demands— such as those of a social movement— without implementing substantive changes to the organization’s activities. In such cases, the organization’s practices have become decoupled from those formally declared commitments—such that the organization has effectively coopted them to manage external challeng- ers (Gamson 1975; Hallett 2010; Meyer and Rowan 1977; Pache and Santos 2013; Selznick 1966). In other cases, organizations respond by refusing to change at all, resulting in organizational inertia. Scholars have identified the mechanisms that contribute to this decoupling and inertia (Campbell 2005; Scott 2014, 151–156). For example, scholars explain that state capacity limitations, such as funding and political autonomy, mediate the extent to which organizations institutionalize social movement demands that conflict with other institutional logics (Bonastia 2000; Kellogg 2011; Liévanos 2012; Rogers- Dillon and Skrentny 1999; Skocpol 1985; Skrentny 1998; Zald et al. 2005). Such reform efforts are also shaped by the extent to which key agency representatives express support for movement principles (Jenness and Grattet 2001, 131; Shilling, London, and Liévanos 2009; Zald, Morrill, and Rao 2005) and institute surveillance and sanctions to compel compliance (Zald, Morrill, and Rao 2005; Kellogg 2011). Scholars also observe that organizations’ responses to competing logics can be shaped by internal disagreement among its own members, who often hold differing interpretations of the organization’s purposes and goals (Alvesson 2011; Binder 2007; Espeland 1998; Greenwood et al. 2011; Hallett and Ventresca 2006; Kellogg 2011; Pache and Santos 2010, 2013). Anne- Claire Pache and Felipe Santos (2010, 2013) thus encourage scholars to treat organizations not as “unitary actors developing strategic responses to outside pressures,” but instead as “complex entities composed of various groups promoting different values, goals, and interests … [and which] play an important role in interpreting and enacting the institutional demands exerted on organizations” (2010, 456, 459). In particular, while some organization members respond to institutional pressures by endorsing organizational changes, other organization members successfully resist them. This resistance to change gets enacted not EQB packet page - 38 20 Chapter 1

only by elites, but also through everyday interactions among staff. Thus, identifying the mechanisms producing organizational inertia includes taking a constructionist approach— identifying the discursive and other interactive processes among organization members through which they define what the organization does and should do, and tracing the effects of these practices (Phillips and Hardy 2002; Schwalbe et al. 2000). In everyday interactions as well as reports and other objects, organization members continually maintain and defend claims about what the organization’s purpose, goals, identity, priorities, and practices are and should be and ward off competing ideas (Alvesson and Robertson 2016; Binder 2007; Burke 2018; Espeland 1998; Fernandez 2015; Kenny, Whittle, and Willmott 2016; Kreiner and Murphy 2016; Lawrence 2008; Pratt et al. 2016). As Alvesson (2011) and Scott (2014) explain, organization members interactively make sense of and maintain these meanings through direct assertions about the organization’s mission, identity, and priorities, but also in ways that are only partially verbalized— such as through stories, classification, labels, jargon, gestures, signals, humor, and rumors. Moreover, these interactive dynamics play out on unequal terrain— the ability of organization members to successfully enforce or resist calls for change depends on their relative power within the organization and how widespread their ideas are among organization members (Greenwood et al. 2011; Pache and Santos 2011).

This Book’s Argument and Theoretical Contributions

As I detail in chapter 2, the practices of environmental regulatory agencies with formal EJ policies are largely decoupled from their formal EJ commitments, while other agencies display complete organizational inertia in the face of calls for regulatory reform from EJ activists and the concerted efforts of EJ- supportive staff within them. Other EJ scholars have shown that these outcomes stem in part from material elements of agencies’ organizational fields that are beyond the control of agency staff— resource constraints and political economic pressure, uncertain legal authority to implement EJ reforms, and underdeveloped analytical tools. In this book, I follow the constructionist approach of organizational discourse studies and build on a long line of constructionist scholarship in environmental sociology3 to offer a new, additional explanation for the disappointing progress of environmental regulatory agencies’ EJ reforms. EQB packet page - 39 Introduction 21

Drawing on extensive interviews with agency staff and observations of agency meetings, I show that environmental regulatory agencies’ EJ efforts are undermined not only by material constraints outside the control of agency staff but also by ways in which staff, when responding to proposed EJ reforms, strive to defend what they think the goals and priorities should be of the regulatory organizations they work for and to which they feel very committed. That is, I show that cultural elements of agencies’ organizational fields— specifically, institutional logics about environmental regulatory agencies’ goals, priorities, and effectiveness—produce disagreement among staff about which proposed EJ reforms (if any) are appropriate and compel some staff to engage in practices that undermine agencies’ EJ reforms. Some staff outright reject proposed EJ reforms, such as by verbally disparaging them as irreconcilable with the organization’s identity, claiming that environmental inequalities are not serious, ignoring EJ staff members’ recommendations, and in some cases even bullying EJ staff because of their EJ work. Through these everyday discursive and other practices, some staff define “environmental justice”— the fight against racial and other forms of environmental inequality— as outside the scope of what these organizations do. This resistance has transcended changes in elected officials and their varying degrees of support for EJ reforms. In conjunction with the material constraints other scholars have demonstrated, these cultural practices stymie the efforts of agencies’ EJ staff and their EJ-supportive coworkers. These practices and the beliefs that motivate them constitute part of the structures of oppression that produce environmental injustice in the first place. Some are unique to regulatory agencies. Others are not; notably, this study provides a lens to examine how racial ideologies and ideas of justice pervasive in U.S. culture play out within these organizations in ways that limit the prospects for reforms designed to reduce racial environmental inequality. To be sure, these practices are not done by all staff. However, they are common enough to undermine the efforts of agencies’ EJ staff. Because EJ staff are few in number and possess minimal authority within their organizations, they are unable to require the institutionalization of EJ principles that conflict with dominant institutional logics. Instead, they must educate their colleagues about EJ, try to convince them that EJ reforms are worth their support and cooperation, and negotiate EJ reforms their colleagues will accept. Some bureaucrats become supportive of EJ staff members and the reforms they propose. However, others do not, and I show in chapters 4, 5, and 6 EQB packet page - 40 22 Chapter 1

how their resistance to EJ undermines the efforts of EJ staff and contributes to organizational inertia—the continuation of regulatory practice that fails to protect America’s most vulnerable and environmentally burdened communities. Moreover, I show in chapter 7 how some EJ-supportive staff themselves unwittingly weaken their own EJ programs by operationalizing “EJ” in ways that deviate from longstanding priorities of the EJ movement. My findings strengthen the scholarship on EJ policy implementation by showing that agencies’ disappointing progress on EJ reforms stems not only from hostile acts of conservative political elites, industry pressure to deregulate, and other factors scholars have rightly noted, but also from everyday practices through which some staff define how these institutions should best protect public health and the environment. In this book, I focus on these elements of regulatory workplace culture because they have received little attention in the scholarship to date. Making greater progress on EJ reforms within environmental regulatory agencies will require more resources, clarification and perhaps expansion of various regulatory authorities, more robust EJ analytical tools, endorsement by leadership, and other factors that other scholars have rightly noted. But it will also require changing these agencies’ organizational culture so that staff and leadership treat EJ as central to what these organizations do, and so that they define EJ in ways that align with longstanding EJ movement principles. By providing a rare glimpse inside these agencies, this book augments scholarship illuminating U.S. environmental regulatory agency culture (Espeland 1998; Fortmann 1990; Harrison 2011; Langston 1995, 2010; Mintz 2012; Pautz and Rinfret 2011, 2014; Rinfret and Pautz 2013; Robertson 2010; Taylor 1984). These studies— as well as this book— help us understand that, in many cases, state institutions’ failures to curtail environmental degradation stem in part from the ways bureaucrats within them strive to do what they think best serves the agency’s mission. More broadly, these findings show that scholars trying to explain environmentally problematic government practices should attend to popular ideas among government agency staff, how they act on them, and other internal dynamics within government agencies— dynamics that often transcend political administrations. Yet this book is not only a story about constraint. Throughout, I also identify ways in which EJ staff and their small but growing network of colleagues supportive of EJ reforms work to circumvent those constraints, in other cases directly challenge them, and in the process make EJ part of their EQB packet page - 41 Introduction 23

agency’s organizational identity. Although they are members of environmental regulatory agencies, many also identify as part of the EJ movement or at least as strong supporters of it. They can thus be understood as activists working within the agencies, trying to change them from the inside out, akin to the “insider activists” and “tempered radicals” striving to change organization practice in accordance with movement principles in other contexts (Banaszak 2005; Espeland 1998; Katzenstein 1999; King and Pearce 2010; Meyerson and Scully 1995; Santoro and McGuire 1997; Soule 2012). They also constitute a subset of “expert activists” or “shadow mobilization”— formally trained experts working to support EJ movements (Frickel 2004a,b; Frickel, Torcasso, and Anders 2015). Throughout the book, I identify the discursive and other mechanisms through which EJ staff and their EJ-supportive colleagues attempt to challenge their coworkers’ resistance to EJ, redefine their agencies’ goals, reevaluate how effectively they have been met, and in turn build further support for proposed EJ reforms among the ranks of agency staff.

Research Approach and Methods

This book addresses the following questions: Why do government agencies allow environmental inequalities to persist? Why do they have such a hard time improving environmental conditions in our nation’s most overburdened and vulnerable communities? I study agencies’ EJ efforts as a case through which to help answer these questions, as environmental justice is explicitly, fundamentally about ameliorating these problems. Thus, I ask: Why, despite the commitments and accomplishments of agencies’ EJ staff, have their EJ programs, policies, and practices done so little to improve conditions in the most environmentally burdened communities and to reduce environmental inequalities among communities? My first interviews with EJ staff indicated that other scholars’ explanations for the slow pace of EJ programs, while not inaccurate, are incomplete, as EJ staff emphasized to me that they face resistance not only from conservative elected officials and industry but also from some of their own coworkers. Thus, to strengthen our understandings of why government agencies have not protected our most overburdened and vulnerable communities, I illuminate the experiences of staff who lead and advocate for EJ reforms to regulatory practice, and in particular I focus on their interactions with coworkers who resist these efforts. EQB packet page - 42 24 Chapter 1

The title of this book is a nod to Luke Cole and Sheila Foster’s excellent early overview of the EJ movement, From the Ground Up (2001). Their title references their focus on grassroots activists’ perspectives on environmental injustice. As Cole and Foster explain: “[G]rassroots struggles are a window into the social relations and processes that underlie distributive outcomes. A view from the ground (or the field) allows us to see the many dimensions of power struggles, the relationships of actors within these struggles, and the role of the regulatory and legal framework in structuring those relationships” (10, 12). My book examines a parallel struggle— that of agency EJ staff and their EJ- supportive colleagues, who work from marginalized positions within their own organizations to pursue environmental justice. I wanted to understand the challenges EJ- supportive staff face in trying to promote EJ reforms within their organizations. To do so, I conducted confidential, semi-structured interviews with staff from environmental regulatory agencies and ethnographic observation at agency meetings in the United States. Ethnographic observation and interviews enabled me to identify how different staff define their responsibilities and agency identity, how they define what “EJ” means, how staff react to proposed EJ reforms, and which practices EJ- supportive staff employ to pursue environmental justice in light of the constraints they face. The semi-structured nature of the interviews allowed me to pursue certain themes of interest, my participants to narrate and interpret their experiences, and us to develop the rapport necessary to discuss politically controversial issues. Confidential interviews and internal (i.e., not public) meetings give staff the space to express beliefs they do not (and cannot) express in formal agency documents or public events. Central to this book are interviews I conducted from 2011 to 2019 with 89 current and former agency representatives. Most of my interview participants have worked at their agency for at least 15 years. About half of these are or were EJ staff who administered agency EJ programs. I interviewed nearly all of the EJ staff at my study sites, which enabled me to gain rich, robust insights into the experience of staff advocating for EJ reforms. The majority of these individuals are persons of color, which appears to reflect the broader population of agencies’ EJ staff. The other half were not formally assigned to work on “EJ” programs; their sentiments about EJ reforms varied from enthusiasm to ambivalence to contempt, some participated in their agency’s EJ efforts as their time and interests allowed, and most of these individuals are white, as are most staff in environmental regulatory EQB packet page - 43 Introduction 25

agencies. I asked my interview participants to describe their current and past involvement with agency EJ efforts, which EJ reforms (if any) they view as important and which they disagree with, which challenges agency EJ efforts have faced, how staff react to proposed EJ reforms, and whether and how those reactions have changed over time. For my interviews with EJ staff, I also asked how coworkers’ reactions influence the implementation of EJ reforms, and to describe the strategies they use to persevere in their EJ efforts despite the constraints they face. The interviews with other (non- EJ) staff enabled me to corroborate and augment EJ staff members’ accounts and to glean a broader set of perspectives on EJ reforms. Interview participants included representatives from U.S. EPA (including EPA headquarters, eight of its regional offices, and one other satellite office), U.S. Department of Justice, U.S. Department of the Interior, seven state environmental regulatory agencies (California Environmental Pro- tection Agency, Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, Min- nesota Pollution Control Agency, New York State Department of Environ- mental Conservation, Oregon Department of Environmental Quality, and Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management), and city or county agencies in California, Colorado, and Missouri. To account for variation among agencies’ progress on EJ policy implementation, I included agencies with the most longstanding and advanced EJ efforts (notably, U.S. EPA, California, and New York) and others with less substantial EJ reforms and programs. My study sites also vary in the number of designated EJ staff, their geographic region in the United States, and whether they have a formal EJ policy endorsed by agency leadership or the legislature. Includ- ing state- level agencies was important, as they hold primary responsible for enforcing much federal environmental law and have considerable discretion with how they do so. Notwithstanding the variation among these study sites and their improvements over time, all agencies’ EJ efforts still fall short of EJ advocates’ expectations (as I detail in chapter 2). Thus, the multi- sited study design enabled me to identify conditions that transcend this diverse array of institutions. Where exceptions exist, I note them and identify the factors that help to explain them. I also observed numerous agency meetings relating to their EJ efforts. These included public meetings: informational sessions about EJ grant programs, EJ advisory committee meetings, a public participation event about an EJ EQB packet page - 44 26 Chapter 1

controversy, and various other agency-convened EJ webinars, workshops, and conference calls. These ranged from 90 minutes to two full days. These helped me meet and recruit interview participants, observe how staff talk to EJ advocates, and observe how EJ advocates advise agencies on what their EJ efforts should entail. My observations also included internal (not public) agency EJ- related meetings. These included four internal EJ planning meetings, and one internal EJ training session for staff. These lasted from one to two hours, and each included about 15 to 30 agency staff. These internal meetings were especially valuable, as they allowed me to observe how bureaucrats react to and characterize EJ reforms. Whereas in public meetings bureaucrats tend to present a united front and be very circumspect, in internal meetings they debated the merits of proposals and defended competing perspectives. I analyzed my interview transcripts, fieldnotes, published scholarship, and other documents for what they revealed about constraints to regulatory agencies’ EJ efforts and techniques through which EJ-supportive staff strive to circumvent or confront those constraints. Throughout the book, I have endeavored to be clear about how much I can generalize from my data. In some cases, I have sufficient evidence that an element of regulatory culture is fairly widespread. Notably, I interviewed such a large portion of all EJ staff in the United States, and their accounts have so much in common, that I feel confident making claims about the experiences of EJ staff in U.S. environmental regulatory agencies. Additionally, my own findings and other scholarship alike indicate that environmental regulatory agency staff tend to identify as public servants and environmental stewards, take great pride in their work, and often make sacrifices for their jobs. In contrast, some of the practices and beliefs I describe— including those relating to racism and racial inequality—have not been studied by other scholars in the context of environmental regulatory agencies. Thus, while extant scholarship shows that these beliefs are widespread in U.S. society and my own data allow me to confidently state that these practices widely affect EJ staff, I am unable to specify how widely held these ideas are by staff in general. I also interviewed 50 representatives of EJ activist organizations, both to better understand what they feel agencies’ EJ efforts should entail and to evaluate how well agencies’ EJ grant programs meet the needs of grantees and other EJ activists. The activists I interviewed are diverse in racial/ethnic identity and located in California, Colorado, Georgia, Maryland, Massachusetts, EQB packet page - 45 Introduction 27

Minnesota, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Puerto Rico, Rhode Island, and Washington, DC. I acknowledge that some individuals do not fit neatly into one category of “scholar,” “bureaucrat,” or “activist.” Some of my research participants identify as activists working within the state, some activists and bureaucrats publish academic scholarship, and some individuals traverse all three fields. Most of the staff I interviewed at all agencies expressed acute, repeated concerns about confidentiality, as did some of the activists. I started all interviews by briefly describing my research project and my confidentiality protections— notably, that I would not identify any of my research participants in conversation, written communication, or publications. Most asked numerous questions about the confidentiality protections, often at several points in our interview, and how I would characterize their identity in my writing. While some insisted that I could quote them freely and use their name, most spoke only on condition of confidentiality—and some made clear that I should not let anyone know they had talked with me at all. Agency staff were most worried that their own supervisors or colleagues would learn that they were critically commenting about the organization’s progress on EJ, how colleagues react to proposed EJ reforms, and industry pressure on agency decision- making. I used a multi-sited study design to make it difficult for my readers to guess the organizational affiliation of any participant who I quote. I also use pseudonyms and obscure identifying characteristics of all research participants— including the organization they work for, the state or region they work within, and sometimes even their gender and/or racial identity. I have not shared any research participant’s identity with other participants except when given permission to do so. The staff interviews and observations of internal agency meetings constitute the heart of my data collection and enable this book’s unique insights into the challenges facing EJ staff and their EJ-supportive colleagues. They were also hard won. Government agencies are notoriously closed institutions under the best of circumstances, and in this case I conducted my research during a time in which environmental regulation and civil rights protections alike are under political attack. Fortunately, I had largely com- pleted interviews with federal agency staff before the new Trump administration restricted staff members’ abilities to speak with researchers. In the appendix, I elaborate on my research methods. EQB packet page - 46 28 Chapter 1

Key Terms

Among EJ advocates, scholars, journalists, and bureaucrats, the terms “EJ community” and “community with EJ concerns” are commonly used shorthand for communities that are environmentally overburdened and disproportionately vulnerable (or “susceptible”) to the effects of exposure to those hazards because of racism, sexism, poverty, linguistic isolation, and/or other factors. However, these terms can be confusing, as sometimes they are used to refer specifically to those communities that have politically organized to fight those hazards. I therefore use the phrase “overburdened and vulnerable communities” because my focus is on policies pertaining to all communities characterized by a significant degree of hazard and suscep- tibility to harm from exposure to that hazard, rather than only communities politically mobilizing for change. “Overburdened” populations are those that are disproportionately sub- jected to multiple environmental stressors, which can include contaminated water, air pollution, risk of flooding and other harm from disasters, unsafe housing conditions, workplace hazards, dangerous street traffic, lack of safe play spaces, threats to Indigenous people’s subsistence and cultural resources, and inability to access fresh, nutritious, affordable, and culturally appropriate food. “Vulnerable” populations are those that are more susceptible to the adverse effects of exposure to environmental harms (Cutter, Boruff, and Shirley 2003; EPA 2017k, 10– 19; NEJAC 2014; Solomon et al. 2016). These include groups that public health experts widely regard as physiologically vulnerable— children, the elderly, pregnant women, and individuals with asthma or compromised immune systems. They also include members of working- class, racially marginalized, immigrant, linguistically isolated, and Native American communities, whose abilities to withstand and recover from environmental harms are compromised by racist biases and violence, exclusion from medical and other social services, fear of interacting with law enforcement, and other social factors (see NJDEP EJAC 2009, 18). Environmental regulatory agencies are arranged hierarchically, with lower and mid- level staff reporting to “managers,” who report to “senior management” (which includes political appointees and senior-level “career” managers). I use the term “staff” generically to refer to any agency representative; I specify some individuals as “managers” when that (more powerful) status is relevant to the discussion. I characterize as “EJ staff” those tasked EQB packet page - 47 Introduction 29

with leading their agencies’ EJ reform efforts; they are very few in number and usually have little authority. I refer to other agency representatives as “other staff,” “colleagues,” “coworkers,” or “bureaucrats”; these catch-all terms refer to staff of all ranks, both career and politically appointed individuals, and any degree of support for EJ reforms (some are strongly supportive, others ambivalent, and others staunchly opposed). Where I use the term “bureaucrat,” following Lipsky (1980) and others, I do so non- pejoratively. I use the phrase “elements of regulatory workplace culture” (or “elements of regulatory culture”) to refer to the combination of narrative interactions among staff (which I describe in chapter 4), other interactive dynamics among staff (chapter 5), staff beliefs about their agency’s responsibilities and the relationship of proposed EJ reforms to them (chapter 6), and EJ staff members’ own definitions of key EJ principles (chapter 7).

The Scope of This Book

To manage the length of this book, I have bounded its scope in several ways. First, I focus on state and federal agencies’ EJ efforts in the United States and the experiences of their staff. This book does not elaborate the significant ways in which municipal decision- making can produce or prevent environmental inequalities. As leading EJ scholars have long demonstrated, discriminatory zoning policies can allow hazardous facilities to become clustered in low- income and racially marginalized communities (Bullard 1990; Bullard et al 2007; Taylor 2014a). That said, through the course of this research, I have interviewed and observed some municipal public health and environment decision- makers. None of their narratives deviated from what I found among state and federal regulators. Thus, I include some of those data in this book. Given that these findings are influenced by the unique historical and current political, cultural, and legal contexts of the United States, other research is needed to investigate the shape of agencies’ EJ efforts in other countries (see Bulkeley and Walker 2005; Scandrett 2007) and the factors constraining them. Second, I focus on environmental regulatory agencies’ efforts formally designated as “environmental justice.” Government agencies have other programs not characterized as “EJ” per se that can improve material conditions in overburdened and vulnerable communities. These include agencies’ valuable efforts to remediate lead, mold, and pest infestations in public housing and schools. However, research demonstrating that environmental EQB packet page - 48 30 Chapter 1

inequalities have persisted over time (Ard 2015) indicates that such programs are not sufficient. Environmental justice requires that government agencies make environmental equity and the reduction of cumulative impacts in overburdened and vulnerable communities an explicit agency policy— rather than leaving it to the whims of uncoordinated special programs. Focusing on agencies’ “EJ” efforts enables me to examine whether and how an agency is formally prioritizing these goals. Third, I focus on environmental regulatory agencies instead of other types of government agencies. To be sure, EJ advocates are concerned about a wide range of problems facing their communities—such as accessible and affordable public transportation and healthy food— that are the purview of other types of government agencies. Those organizations thus have important roles to play in institutionalizing environmental justice, and some have started to do so (e.g., DOT 2017, USDA 2015). I focus on environmental regulatory agencies like U.S. EPA because remediating hazards in overburdened, vulnerable communities has always been the leading goal of EJ advocacy, and environmental regulatory agencies have the broadest-reaching control over the hazards to which overburdened and vulnerable communities are exposed. Fourth, I focus on elements of environmental regulatory culture. Other scholars have rightly noted that material factors constrain environmental regulatory agencies’ progress on EJ reforms. I elaborate and honor these explanations in chapter 3, and then I focus the rest of the book on cultural explanations precisely because they also matter and have received almost no attention by other scholars. I am unable to specify the relative importance of these various constraints. They all matter, and making meaningful progress on EJ reforms will require addressing all of them. Fifth, I recommend general EJ reforms to environmental regulatory agency practice (in chapter 8). I do not specify precisely how to roll them out. Agency staff need this guidance, but it is beyond the scope of this book. Addition- ally, environmental justice requires reforms that extend beyond the purview of environmental regulatory agencies. EJ advocates have rightly insisted that environmental inequalities are just one symptom of state-sanctioned inequality and racist oppression, which manifest also in realms of health care, labor markets, workplaces, food and nutrition, law enforcement, and education. Justice thus requires policies to redistribute wealth more equita- bly (e.g., through more progressive income tax structures, higher corporate taxes, higher minimum wages, stronger protections for organized labor, EQB packet page - 49 Introduction 31

universal health care, and equitable public education), policies to democratize decision- making (e.g., campaign finance reform and fighting voter suppression), as well as policies, regulatory practices, and cultural change to combat racism and other forms of oppression. In short, EJ requires changing the structures that currently give some groups much greater opportunities than others— environmental and otherwise. I write this book as one contri- bution to this greater cause, and with the hope that it provides insights into how bureaucrats might help to support the broad goal of justice.

Organization of This Book

In chapter 2, I describe agencies’ EJ efforts to date, and I specify key ways in which they are essentially decoupled from longstanding EJ movement principles and fail to meet the needs of overburdened and vulnerable communities. In chapter 3, I address the typical explanations offered by scholars and agency representatives alike for the slow pace of government agencies’ EJ efforts: that agencies possess insufficient resources to implement proposed EJ reforms; that environmental laws do not grant government agencies the regulatory authority to implement some of the EJ reforms proposed by EJ staff; and that agencies’ efforts to institutionalize EJ tenets into regulatory practices are hindered by technical factors such as insufficient data and underdeveloped EJ analysis techniques. I show that these material elements of agencies’ organizational fields indeed condition agencies’ EJ efforts, yet I also establish that these explanations do not fully explain agencies’ disappointing progress on EJ and thus argue that additional explanations are needed. In chapters 4 through 7, I showcase my data from interviews with agency staff and observations of agency meetings to demonstrate that environmental regulatory agencies’ poor progress on EJ reforms stems also from aspects of regulatory workplace culture— ways that bureaucrats respond to EJ staff and interact about proposed EJ reforms. In chapter 4, I describe discursive mechanisms through which some staff resist proposed EJ reforms. I show how bureaucrats make claims in everyday workplace interactions— including about their organizations’ identity and the scope of racial inequalities— that defend existing regulatory practice and delegitimize proposed EJ reforms. In chapter 5, I describe other mechanisms through which some staff undermine proposed EJ reforms— such as ignoring EJ staff and the practices they recommend— and I show how these practices undermine the efforts of EQB packet page - 50 32 Chapter 1

EJ staff. While chapters 4 and 5 identify mechanisms through which staff express resistance to change, chapter 6 offers explanations for that resistance to proposed EJ reforms, including uncertainty about how to apply EJ principles, bureaucrats’ lack of experience in overburdened and vulnerable communities, as well as institutional logics that cast EJ reforms as inappropriate and unnecessary. In each of chapters 4 through 6, I also showcase how EJ staff and their EJ- supportive colleagues respond to these elements of regulatory workplace culture. Informed by EJ activists, they design and implement EJ reforms and strive to build support for them among their coworkers. Through their practices, EJ-supportive staff brandish a set of institutional logics that are new to environmental regulatory agencies, challenge claims about the effectiveness of regulatory practices, and assert the need to prioritize environmental improvements in America’s most overburdened and vulnerable communities. In chapter 7, I focus my attention on EJ staff themselves, showing that some of the decoupling of agencies’ EJ efforts from longstanding priorities of the EJ movement also stems from the ways some EJ staff define “EJ” and apply their ideas. I demonstrate competing claims among EJ staff— such as about the best mechanism for achieving social change—to explain why some EJ staff design EJ programs that deviate from longstanding EJ movement principles. I explain that these conflicts among EJ staff reflect competing institutional logics within U.S. politics in general and the U.S. environmental justice movement in particular. In chapter 8, I conclude by summarizing my arguments about the importance of agencies’ EJ efforts for combatting environmental inequalities that pose grave risks to human health, my critical evaluation of agencies’ EJ efforts to date, and my explanations for the slow pace of agencies’ EJ reforms. To foster conversation about what justice requires of the next environmental regulatory regime, I conclude with numerous recommendations for strengthening the process and progress of EJ policy implementation within environmental regulatory agencies. EQB packet page - 51

2 Government Agencies’ Environmental Justice Efforts: Review and Critical Assessment

I have been working with communities even before the term environmental justice existed. Nowadays, unlike when I started doing this work, agencies, many of them, have diverse staff. Some of them do multi-lingual public notices. They actually have hearings in communities where they come and smile and have translation. But what hasn’t changed is that, in 99.9 percent of the situations, they still ignore the facts, violate environmental justice, stab communities in the back, and issue permits to polluters, no matter what. — Barry, EJ activist

Many offices have made progress [on environmental justice], but it’s all relative. It’s not light- years of progress. It’s more like six inches of progress. — Government agency EJ staff person

In this chapter, I describe and critically evaluate state and federal environmental regulatory agencies’ policies, programs, and practices formally designated as “environmental justice.” As I will show, some have started to implement valuable EJ efforts that reflect the hard work and commitments of agencies’ EJ staff and others who support them. However, they fall short of EJ principles in numerous important respects.

Agencies’ Key EJ Efforts to Date

In response to pressure from EJ advocates, some environmental regulatory agencies over the past 20 years in the United States have started to adopt EJ policies, programs, and practices. EQB packet page - 52 34 Chapter 2

EJ Policies EO 12898 directs each federal agency to make EJ part of its mission by reducing environmental problems disproportionately harming low- income and minority communities.1 In a subsequent memorandum, President Clinton specified that the legal authority of EO 12898 is based in the National Environmental Policy Act and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. Notably, to strengthen federal enforcement of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, the memorandum directs agencies to ensure that recipients of federal funding (including state and local governments) do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, or national origin or disparately impact people along those lines (Clinton 1994b). EPA subsequently developed the following definition of EJ:2

Environmental justice is the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income, with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies. EPA has this goal for all communities and persons across this nation. It will be achieved when everyone enjoys the same degree of protection from environmental and health hazards, and equal access to the decision-making process to have a healthy environment in which to live, learn, and work. (EPA 2017a)

Just as the EJ movement has fought both for more equitable environmental outcomes and more democratic decision- making processes, this definition entails distributive elements (“fair treatment” and “same degree of protection from environmental and health hazards”) and procedural ones (“meaningful involvement” and “equal access to the decision-making process”). EPA also recently formally established the links between these principles and its policies for working with tribes and Indigenous peoples (EPA 2014). Other federal agencies have also developed their own EJ definitions and policies. Some states have formally committed to integrating EJ principles into one or more areas of agency practice via executive order, legislative policy, strategic plan, and/or administrative order. These include California, Colorado, Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, Massachu- setts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, and West Virginia. Nearly all of these adopt language from EO 12898 and EPA’s definition. Because agencies’ environmental laws and policies have not historically included any language about environmental inequalities, formal EJ policies legitimize EJ principles and proposed EJ reforms to agency practice. EQB packet page - 53 Government Agencies’ Environmental Justice Efforts 35

EJ Staff Agencies’ EJ efforts are led by “EJ staff,” who propose EJ policies, programs, and reforms to regulatory practice, and solicit feedback about and support for those proposals from coworkers, managers, and agency leadership. They are primary contacts for communities concerned about environmental regulation, and they help concerned residents navigate government agencies and connect with agency staff who can assist them. Ultimately, all staff should do EJ through their daily work. In the meantime, EJ staff lead the process of designing EJ reforms to colleagues’ work practices. EJ staff members’ efforts are shaped by their limited resources and subordinated structural position within the agencies. EJ staff are few in number— out of hundreds or thousands of employees in any agency, only one or a few are formally assigned to EJ efforts. U.S. EPA’s EJ program is by far the largest, with approximately 20 staff in its Office of Environmental Justice in Wash- ington DC and an additional few “EJ coordinators” throughout headquarters and at each of its 10 regional offices (out of 15,000 employees). EJ staff receive few resources with which to conduct their work and generally have little to no authority over other staff. Thus, they cannot impose reforms; instead, they must educate their colleagues about the scope, forms, and roots of environmental inequality and convince coworkers that EJ reforms deserve their cooperation. EJ staff also ask other staff to help design, test, and implement EJ reforms and programs, with some doing so more exten- sively than others.

Public Meetings and Advisory Committees EJ staff hold public meetings and hearings to solicit input on their proposed EJ reforms and programs. Some states convene EJ advisory committees (e.g., Michigan Environmental Justice Work Group Report 2018) that typically include representatives from EJ organizations, tribes, academia, industry, and local government. The National Environmental Justice Advi- sory Council (NEJAC) serves this function for U.S. EPA and has provided extensive written recommendations for how the agency can better support environmental justice. These range from general recommendations about increasing public participation and working with tribes, to specific guidance on integrating EJ principles into agency efforts to prevent chemical plant disasters, reduce air emissions associated with goods movement, and bolster natural disaster preparedness (EPA 2017h). EQB packet page - 54 36 Chapter 2

Peer Learning within and across Agencies EJ staff at EPA’s headquarters and regional offices provide EJ guidance to other federal agencies, state agencies, and tribal governments. Federal agencies share proposed EJ reforms through the Interagency Working Group on Environmental Justice (EJ IWG). In the past, EPA helped fund states’ and tribes’ EJ reform development efforts through its States and Tribal EJ Cooperative Agreements grants program (EPA 2009a). EPA also periodically hosts All States Environmental Justice conference calls (one in the western United States and another in the eastern United States) for EJ staff from EPA, state agencies, and local agencies. As of late 2018, EPA EJ staff are developing webinars to train states on designing specific EJ reforms. Additionally, EPA and states participate in The Environmental Council on States (ECOS), which occasionally addresses EJ policy reform proposals (notably, see ECOS 2017). Some agencies convene quarterly or monthly internal EJ steering committees comprised of representatives from various agency units. Some agencies offer EJ trainings to educate staff about the scope and roots of environmental inequalities, build support among staff for EJ reforms, and identify practices through which staff can ensure that future agency actions account for and, ideally, reduce the unequal nature of environmental hazards. Some EJ trainings are administered to teams of workers by EJ staff trained to guide group conversation and learning, but most are administered as optional, online tutorials for individual bureaucrats to complete as their time permits. The task of training staff is a monumental one, given that there are approximately fifteen thousand staff at EPA, about the same at the Department of Energy, and tens of thousands more across other environment- related agencies.

Identifying Overburdened and Vulnerable Communities To help target their EJ efforts, agencies use EJ screening tools that identify communities that are environmentally overburdened and vulnerable to those hazards (Holifield 2012, 2014; Lewis and Bennett 2013; Payne- Sturges et al. 2012; Shadbegian and Wolverton 2015). Some agencies have used such tools to conduct extra public engagement within overburdened and vulnerable communities. For example, Connect- icut’s Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (CDEEP) has published a list of “EJ Communities” defined by various socioeconomic status criteria (CDEEP 2017a). Per statute, the agency requires certain types EQB packet page - 55 Government Agencies’ Environmental Justice Efforts 37

of hazardous industries seeking to locate or expand facilities in those communities to do extra public engagement (CDEEP 2017b). As another example, California law specifies that at least 25 percent of the proceeds from the state’s greenhouse gas cap- and- trade program must fund projects that improve environmental conditions in socially and environmentally “disad- vantaged communities.” CalEPA uses its EJ screening tool, CalEnviroScreen, to identify areas eligible for those grant funds.3

EJ Projects Some state and federal agencies have participated in place- based EJ projects (sometimes called “EJ pilot projects”) to improve environmental conditions in overburdened, vulnerable communities (Bruno and Jepson 2018; Lashley 2016; Liévanos, London, and Sze 2011; London, Sze, and Liévanos 2008). Through these projects, agencies can develop and test practices for increasing public participation in regulatory decision- making, conduct environmental monitoring in innovative ways, collaborate more effectively with other agencies, and build capacity for change among residents. In some cases, agencies have been able to document concrete, measured reduction of environmental harm (e.g., see EPA 2018d, 18). Some projects also demonstrate how redevelopment can serve the community’s interests and needs (i.e., not simply those of developers), such as by providing green jobs and constructing health clinics, public transit, affordable housing, or other infrastructure (NEJAC 1996). EJ staff emphasize that these projects set valuable precedent— providing models for how to do regulatory work differently. For instance, efforts to develop more environmentally just general plan processes in National City and Jurupa Valley, California, paved the way for a 2016 law that requires all California cities and counties to incor- porate EJ concerns into their general plans (Senate Bill 1000) (CLI 2016). EJ staff also emphasize that EJ projects help create inspirational changes that can legitimize proposed EJ reforms among staff. Agencies’ reports that describe their progress in supporting EJ principles tend to showcase such projects (e.g., see EPA 2018d). Some other agency programs that fund or govern environmental cleanup and community revitalization projects, while not called “EJ” explicitly, have policy language that encourages such projects to be conducted in overburdened and vulnerable communities. For example, many agencies allow companies that have violated environmental laws to offset part of their EQB packet page - 56 38 Chapter 2

penalties with a Supplemental Environmental Project (SEP) that improves public health and/or the environment beyond what existing law requires. A few agencies— including in California, Colorado, Illinois, Massachusetts, Missouri, Oregon, and Virginia— encourage violators to do SEPs in overburdened and vulnerable communities (Bonorris 2010; California 2015). Some agencies, including in Colorado and Illinois, have encouraged EJ advocates to submit ideas for potential SEPs to agency staff, who collect these suggestions and share them with violators interested in discussing a SEP in their settlement negotiations.

EJ Grant Programs EJ advocates lobbied for government agencies to create dedicated EJ grant programs to help address the gap in funding for small- scale, grassroots EJ organizations (Brulle and Jenkins 2005; Faber and McCarthy 2001; Hansen 2012). A few government agencies in the United States have “Environmen- tal Justice” grant programs that provide funding to community- based, non- profit organizations and tribes for nearly any type of project that improves environmental conditions in overburdened and vulnerable communities (Harrison 2015, 2016; London, Sze, and Liévanos 2008; Vajjhala 2010). These are the California Environmental Protection Agency (CalEPA) Envi- ronmental Justice Small Grants Program (118 grants awarded from 2005 to 2016), New York EJ Community Impact Grant Program (145 grants from 2006 to 2017), U.S. EPA Environmental Justice Small Grants Program (1,421 grants from 1994 to 2017), and U.S. EPA Environmental Justice Collabora- tive Problem- Solving (CPS) Cooperative Agreement Program (61 grants from 2003 to 2016). Most of these programs’ grants have been between $15,000 and $50,000, though EPA CPS awards range from $100,000 to $120,000. The City of San Francisco’s Environmental Justice Grants Program allocated 55 grants from 2001 until its end in 2010. Program administrators recruit reviewers from within the agency representing different areas of technical expertise, who score proposals per program requirements (description of project objectives, work plan, and detailed budget). A few additional agencies offer issue-specific “EJ” grant funding opportunities to grassroots organizations (e.g., Massachusetts’ Urban Forestry EJ Pilot Grant Program provided funding for organizations planting trees in urban areas). Additionally, National Institute of Environmental Health Science’s (NIEHS) former Environmental Justice Partnerships for EQB packet page - 57 Government Agencies’ Environmental Justice Efforts 39

Communication Grant Program funded collaborations between expert scientists and community organizations to research environmental hazards disproportionately burdening vulnerable populations. Agencies’ EJ grant programs help sustain organizations and coalitions that are often overlooked by foundations and other funders. Funded projects help inform bureaucrats and decision- makers about grassroots EJ organizations and issues facing overburdened and vulnerable communities, when state actors may otherwise only be familiar with the concerns and work of the most prominent environmental organizations. Some EJ grant programs create partnerships among grassroots organizations and other actors. EPA staff have especially lauded its grant programs that feature its “collaborative problem- solving” model (including the CPS program) for helping grantees to continue solving problems after the funding ends (e.g., King 2012; Lee 2005). Agencies also fund EJ organizations and local government agencies’ EJ work through programs not called “EJ” per se and whose greater resources enable their funded projects to significantly impact public health and the environment. For example, EJ advocates widely hailed EPA’s former Com- munity Action for a Renewed Environment (CARE) grant program (EPA 2017d; King 2012), EPA’s former Community-University Partnership (CUP) grant program (EPA 1998a), EPA’s Brownfields Redevelopment grant program (EPA 2017e), NIEHS’s Research to Action grant program (NIEHS 2017), Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) former Sustainable Communi- ties Initiative (HUD 2017), Technical Assistance Grants offered through EPA’s Superfund and other programs (EPA 2017f), and EPA’s Urban Waters Small Grants program (EPA 2018f). California’s new Community Air Grants program also supports EJ organizations (ARB 2018).

EJ Reforms to Core Regulatory Practice Arguably the most important form of EJ policy implementation is the systematic integration of EJ principles into the core regulatory decision- making practices through which agencies govern environmental conditions: rulemaking, permitting, and enforcement. Whereas EJ grant programs and other EJ projects improve environmental conditions at specific sites as funding allows and can be done by a relatively small number of staff, integrating EJ principles into core regulatory practice could reduce environmental inequalities and democratize decision-making through every EQB packet page - 58 40 Chapter 2

regulatory decision and across each agency’s geographic jurisdiction, and they require the cooperation of most agency staff. These efforts accelerated in the Obama administration when EPA Admin- istrator Lisa Jackson’s senior advisor on EJ prioritized the development of guidance documents for integrating EJ principles into core regulatory functions. These guidance documents have focused on two objectives: creating more opportunities for public engagement, and integrating EJ analysis into regulatory decision- making. “EJ analysis” can include using EJ screening tools to identify communities that have the greatest environmental burdens and social vulnerabilities, assessing how a regulatory decision might disproportionately burden some groups over others, and/or doing a cumulative impact assessment to identify how all of a community’s hazards and vulnerabilities together impact human health. The federal government’s guidance documents on integrating EJ analysis into environmental review required under the National Environmental Policy Act is an early and prominent example of such materials, which were further developed in 2016 (CEQ 1997; EPA 1998b; EJ IWG 2016; see also CalEPA 2010). Subsequent guidance documents identify how other environmental laws and regulations authorize federal agencies to implement specific EJ reforms, drawing on analyses such as those in EPA’s EJ Legal Tools report (EPA 2011b). I will briefly note how agencies have sought to integrate EJ into three key specific areas of core regulatory work: rulemaking, permitting, and enforcement. This work is very nascent. With the exception of guidelines for increasing public participation, agencies are still debating what specific changes to staff practices are required for EJ. Rulemaking Rulemaking is the process through which environmental regulatory agencies translate laws into enforceable regulations (or “rules”). Regulations set air and water quality standards and specify permissible production and waste management practices. Agencies regularly introduce new rules and revise existing rules, processes called “rulemaking.” Deci- sions about which rulemaking to attempt in any given year are driven by many factors, including the current administration’s priorities, court decisions, resources, other agencies’ regulatory decisions, and pressure from the legislature, industry, environmental organizations, and other stakeholders about what the agency’s priorities should be. To develop or revise rules, rulemaking staff (or “rulewriters”) consider various social, economic, and ecological costs and benefits of each rule option. There are no hard and fast requirements about how to rank these considerations. EJ advocates have EQB packet page - 59 Government Agencies’ Environmental Justice Efforts 41

long argued that industry’s disproportionate influence over the rulemaking process has led to weak environmental rules. The most robust agency effort to integrate EJ principles into the rulemaking process is EPA’s set of final guidance documents issued in 2015 and 2016 (EPA 2015a; EPA 2016a; Shadbegian and Wolverton 2015). These authorize and encourage EPA rulewriting staff to consider, in addition to other factors, potential “EJ concerns”—how a rule might create, exacerbate, or ameliorate disproportionate and adverse impacts on vulnerable communities. The documents specify points in the federal rulemaking process at which such considerations can be made, techniques for identifying and assessing these potential EJ concerns, how to decide which rules are highest priority for EJ analyses, and opportunities for increasing public involvement in the rule development process. Federal agencies have increasingly considered EJ in their rulemaking analyses. EPA economists report that, whereas EJ analyses were conducted in fewer than two EPA rules per year between 1995 and 2009, they were conducted for more than 20 EPA rules per year from 2010 to 2012 (Shad- begian and Wolverton 2015, 117– 118). Some EPA rulewriting staff told me that nearly all “major” new rules include EJ analyses (though others and EJ advocates characterize most of these as fairly superficial). In Colorado, the Department of Public Health and the Environment (CDPHE) Health Equity and Environmental Justice staff got the department to adopt a new EJ analysis requirement into its “Regulatory Efficiency Review” policy in 2016. The new language specifies that staff must “[d]eter- mine if the regulation has health equity and environmental justice implications” and, if so, “identify if regulatory implementation practices can be changed, if the regulation needs to be revised, or if changes to statute/federal regulation are needed to address the health equity and environmental justice implications” (CDPHE 2016). Permitting Permitting is the process through which regulated entities apply for permission to pollute. Environmental regulatory agencies develop legally enforceable permits for each regulated pollution source. A regulated entity submits a permit application; agency staff then review those applications for concordance with existing laws and develop a draft permit that undergoes internal and sometimes external review. Very rarely, agencies deny permit applications. EJ advocates criticize permitting processes for being overly influenced by regulated entities and insist that communities EQB packet page - 60 42 Chapter 2

deserve greater ability to influence permit decisions. Indeed, some agencies only inform the public after the permit has been issued. EJ advocates also argue that permits need stronger permit conditions to reduce the environmental hazards to which overburdened communities are exposed. One EJ advocate asserted several times to me that “[p]ermitting is the holy grail of integrating EJ into regulatory practice,” underscoring the important role permits play in shaping a community’s environmental conditions. To date, agencies’ efforts to integrate EJ principles into permitting have focused on increasing community involvement in permit decision-making processes. EPA, other federal agencies, a handful of state agencies, and the Environmental Council of the States have created guidelines that encourage permitting staff to create more opportunities for public comment on draft permits for facilities in overburdened and vulnerable areas, advertise those comment opportunities in ways likely reach potentially affected community members, hold public hearings at times and locations accessible to community members, and present relevant background information in language accessible to broad audiences (i.e., without dense technical jargon, and in languages other than English where appropriate) (ECOS 2017; EPA 2006, 2011a, 2013a, 2016b; IEPA 2018; MPCA 2015; ODEQ 1997). EPA encourages permit applicants to conduct enhanced outreach with residents and EJ advocates when permits affect overburdened and vulnerable communities (EPA 2013a). Laws in Connecticut and New York require those seeking permits for certain types of major new facilities and facility expan- sions in low- income communities to do extra public engagement (CDEEP 2017a; NYSDEC 2003). New York policy further requires the state’s Depart- ment of Environmental Conservation (NYSDEC) to facilitate alternative dispute resolution between permit applicants and the public to help resolve any conflicts that emerge in the permit review process (NYSDEC 2003). Additionally, a few agencies have offered training sessions to help community members and their advocates better understand the permitting process and how to participate in it most effectively (MPCA 2017; EPA 2018d, 24). A few agencies require that staff conduct EJ analyses when reviewing permit applications for facilities in and near overburdened and vulnerable communities (e.g., NYSDEC 2003; Massachusetts 2002, 2017; MPCA 2018). Notably, California Senate Bill 673 (2015) formalized this goal for CalEPA’s Department of Toxic Substances Control, instructing its staff to consider the vulnerability of nearby populations, as well as the facility’s regulatory compliance history, EQB packet page - 61 Government Agencies’ Environmental Justice Efforts 43

when reviewing permit applications for hazardous waste facilities (CLI 2015). During the Obama administration, U.S. EPA EJ staff developed guidance documents for conducting and applying EJ analyses during permit review (EPA 2016b, 17). Their goal, pending leadership approval to continue this work, is to help states adapt this guidance to their own regulations and programs. Enforcement Enforcement refers to the processes through which environmental regulatory agencies monitor regulated actors’ compliance with regulations and permit conditions and use education, warnings, and penalties to enforce environmental law. In addition to the fact that hazardous facilities are clustered in working- class and racially marginalized communities, research has shown that regulatory enforcement has been less stringent in those areas (Konisky and Reenock 2015). Government agencies could integrate EJ principles into enforcement by prioritizing and increasing the frequency of inspections in overburdened and vulnerable communities, holding regulatory violators in those areas accountable to the greatest extent possible, informing communities of regulatory violations, correcting violations in ways that benefit the community, and prioritizing cleanup of contaminated sites in those areas. Several agencies promise to increase regulatory enforcement in overburdened and vulnerable communities (EPA 2016b; Massachusetts 2002, 2017; MPCA 2015, 7– 8). EPA’s Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance (OECA) has reportedly developed internal guidance documents directing staff to consider the vulnerability of populations surrounding regulated sites and industries when setting enforcement priorities and all other steps of regulatory enforcement. New York Commissioner Policy 29 directs the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (NYSDEC) to conduct supplemental inspections in facilities suspected of being out of compliance in “potential environmental justice areas” (NYSDEC 2003, 5). NYSDEC has done this through its Operation ECO- Quality program (for a similar effort in California, see CalEPA n.d., 2015; DTSC 2016).

Critically Assessing Agencies’ EJ Efforts

Some states have none of the valuable accomplishments I have listed—no EJ policy, EJ staff, EJ advisory committee, staff trainings, or EJ grant programs, and certainly no semblance of formal EJ reforms to core regulatory practice. Of those that do, their EJ staff emphasize that they and their EJ-supportive EQB packet page - 62 44 Chapter 2

colleagues work hard to design EJ reforms, and their agencies’ EJ track records have improved over time. That said, all agencies’ EJ efforts are limited in certain key respects.

Inadequate Efforts to Reduce Cumulative Impacts and Environmental Inequalities Agencies’ place- based EJ projects improve conditions in many overburdened and vulnerable communities and constitute models that agencies can use for crafting broader reforms. However, agencies have made little progress on institutionalizing EJ reforms to core regulatory practice in ways that would systematically, broadly reduce cumulative environmental impacts in overburdened communities and make environmental conditions more equitable across communities. Agencies’ EJ reforms to core regulatory work have focused on increasing public participation: getting more information to the public about regulatory decisions and providing more opportunities for the public to comment. These are important improvements upon existing regulatory practice from which communities have historically been excluded, and some staff have put countless hours into developing and advocating for these reforms. However, EJ advocates and residents feel that agencies largely ignore the input they provide through EJ advisory committees and public hearings (Lashley 2016; Liévanos 2012; London, Sze, and Liévanos 2008). Although EPA staff increasingly consider EJ when developing new and revised rules, those efforts are still the exception rather than the norm. Policy analyst Douglas Noonan recently observed that, aside from a few EPA- reported rules that relate to EJ, “Other instances of the EPA exercising discretion in incorporating environmental justice into its rulemaking are few and far between” (Noonan 2015, 101). Earlier studies reached similar conclusions; indeed, Banzhaf (2011, 5–6) concluded that the EPA’s regulatory impact assessments include “perfunctory, pro forma assertions that it is not creating or exacerbating an environmental injustice” lacking sub- stantiating evidence (see also GAO 2005; Vajjhala, Van Epps, and Szambe- lan 2008). One EPA rulewriter told me in 2018 that EJ analyses are rarely done and that managers “never” use EJ analyses to shape the final rule. EPA’s guidance documents on rulemaking say that rulewriting staff “can” and “should” conduct EJ analyses to “consider EJ” during the development of new or revised regulations, but not that they must do so, despite the EQB packet page - 63 Government Agencies’ Environmental Justice Efforts 45

fact that doing so is required under the National Environmental Policy Act. Moreover, agency decision-makers are under no obligation to ensure that that the final rule improves material conditions in overburdened and vulnerable communities and reduces environmental inequalities. EJ advocates lament that very little of any final rule has reflected EJ concerns. Agencies’ EJ guidance documents for permitting have similarly focused on increasing ways for communities to learn about and comment on pending permit applications. The policies directing agencies to conduct EJ analyses during the permitting process (those of California, Massachusetts, and New York, and for the federal NEPA process, all described previously) do not instruct the agencies about what to do with the “consideration” of EJ. NEJAC has criticized the nonbinding nature of EPA’s guidances on integrating EJ into permitting, noting that the implementation of EPA’s suggestions is “depen- dent upon the discretion and self- imposed commitment of EPA’s leadership” (NEJAC 2013a, 4). Legal scholar Eileen Gauna notes that EPA permit writers have regularly ignored the agency’s recommended EJ practices, doing thin EJ analyses if they do them at all, and that few permits have been amended or halted on EJ grounds (Gauna 2015; see also Foster 2008; NAPA 2001). Alyse Bertenthal (2018) shows that courts have been complicit in this, as they have deemed adequate even extremely brief references to EJ issues in agencies’ permitting decisions and not challenged agencies’ decisions. EPA’s guidance documents on integrating EJ into core regulatory work, which took years to develop, are a significant accomplishment. That said, ultimately their value is in their implementation. One EPA staff person told me in 2018 that these guidance documents are still “not implemented in any significant way,” and the extent that they are implemented is “more as a result of happenstance than something that is methodical and systematic.” Scholars have raised similar concerns in the realm of enforcement. While EPA’s enforcement staff might “consider” EJ throughout the enforcement lifecycle, scholars show that the enforcement of major federal environmental laws has not increased in low- income and racially marginalized communities since EO 12898 (Konisky 2009; Konisky and Reenock 2015). EPA staff were unable to provide me with any concrete evidence that enforcement priorities have shifted toward overburdened and vulnerable communities. EPA’s progress on enforcing Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act is among the most glaring examples of an agency’s failure to enforce EJ-related law. Under Title VI, private actors can file administrative complaints with federal EQB packet page - 64 46 Chapter 2

agencies about federally funded activities or decisions that are discriminatory in intent or effect along lines of race, color, or national origin. Where federal agencies find that their funding recipients are out of Title VI compliance, the federal agency can negotiate a voluntary Title VI compliance agreement with the funded entity, terminate the funding, or refer the case to the Department of Justice for litigation. EPA has failed to adequately investigate Title VI violation claims, many of which have languished at EPA for over a decade. EPA accepted few Title VI complaints for investigation, rejecting most for not meeting minor procedural specifications (Cole 1999; Deloitte Consulting 2011; Engelman Lado 2017, 88– 90; S. Foster 2000; Gauna 2015; Gordon and Harley 2005, 160; LoPresti 2013; Mank 2008; Matthew 2017). Only twice has EPA reached a formal finding of discrimination, and these two cases were badly mishandled. In the first, where EPA after many years found that California pesticide laws allowed Latino school children to be disproportionately exposed to harmful soil fumigants, EPA reached a settlement agreement with California’s Department of Pesticide Regulation without involving the citizen complainants in those deliberations, and the terms of that settlement provided no remedies or protections for schoolchil- dren.4 In the other case, EPA took two decades to determine that Michigan’s Department of Environmental Quality discriminated against black community residents concerned about the permitting of an incinerator in Flint, and EPA only issued nonbinding recommendations and failed to pursue the case further (Engelman Lado 2017, 85). Other Title VI cases have been settled out of court through alternative dispute resolution, but their settle- ments have focused on procedural fixes rather than improving substantive environmental conditions in disproportionately burdened communities. Legal scholar Marianne Engelman Lado emphasizes that EPA has failed to enforce Title VI in other ways. Federal agencies can initiate “compliance reviews” to evaluate the extent to which state agencies and other federal funding recipients are complying with Title VI. EPA has initiated a Title VI compliance review only once, whereas some other federal agencies do this regularly (Engelman Lado 2017, 50, 52). EPA could also require the entities it funds to develop and submit a Title VI compliance plan as a condition of receiving federal funding (see also Lazarus 1993). While other agencies have done so, EPA has not (Engelman Lado 2017, 68–69, 73). Some EPA insiders disagree that EPA could withhold funding from a state regulatory agency, EQB packet page - 65 Government Agencies’ Environmental Justice Efforts 47

noting that EPA could not afford to take over a state agency and that any threat to do so would instigate retaliation from that state’s political elites (see also Gauna 2015, 98). Yet EPA could use Title VI compliance reviews and compliance plans to constructively help states and other federal funding recipients design much- needed, systematic civil rights reforms. Numerous investigations, including a scathing and widely circulated 2016 report by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, have lambasted the agency’s Title VI track record (U.S. CCR 2016; CPI 2015). Shortly after that report was released, the EPA’s NEJAC addressed the issue at its meeting, where EJ advocate Vernice Miller- Travis stridently excoriated the EPA for its failure to enforce Title VI. Her comments, delivered with anger and punctu- ated by pounding her fist on the table, underscored the significance of Title VI and EPA’s failure to enforce it:

The only statutory ground that environmental justice stands on is the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It is the piece of law in statute that undergirds environmental justice. The Executive Order is not a law. It does not have the force of law, and it does not supersede any existing law passed by Congress and signed by the President. The Executive Order is a great thing, but if the next president decides that they do not like the Executive Order, the Executive Order is history. So, if you are not enforcing the Civil Rights Act, you are not moving the environmental justice agenda. It is the thing upon which environmental justice stands.5

Staff often attribute EPA’s Title VI failures to the management of the office that handles Title VI complaints. Several noted that past management directed staff to use any administrative grounds possible to reject Title VI complaints, that none of the office’s staff had any particular interest or experience in civil rights law, and that some were assigned to work there after having done poorly in other jobs within the agency. EPA staff also emphasize that the office started to change under the leadership of Lilian Dorka, appointed in 2016, who, as one staff person noted, was “the first person with a practical understanding of Civil Rights law” at the EPA. In late 2016, EPA vowed to strengthen its enforcement of Title VI, issued a new strategic plan and investigation manual for its staff, initiated alternative dispute resolution in several unresolved cases, moved Title VI enforcement into its Office of General Council, and conducted outreach with many states about civil rights law compliance (Buford 2017a; EPA 2018d, 39; Matthew 2017). Whether these efforts work remains to be seen. EQB packet page - 66 48 Chapter 2

Undermining EJ Activists’ Pursuit of Stronger Environmental Protections Additionally, some agencies’ EJ efforts have been criticized as undermining EJ activists’ pursuit of stronger environmental protections. Some EJ advocates and scholars argue that agencies’ EJ advisory committees and other public engagement efforts neuter EJ advocacy by keeping EJ activists busy attending meetings and playing nice with state actors rather than challenging them (Holifield 2004). At the same time, industry actors participating in some agencies’ EJ advisory committees have rebuked EJ advocate participants’ key principles, thereby neutering the committees’ recommendations and leaving EJ advocates feeling they had wasted their time (Holifield 2004; Kohl 2016; Liévanos 2012; Liévanos, London, and Sze 2011; London, Sze, and Liévanos 2008; NEJAC 2011). Some EJ advocates have raised related concerns about agencies’ EJ grant programs. Their stringent application requirements leave some EJ advocates concerned that the grant programs favor professionalization and thus marginalize the most grassroots-based of organizations—those for whom the grant programs were originally designed to fund and who need grant resources the most. Additionally, federal and some state agency policies prohibit staff from providing tailored advice about grant programs to any prospective applicants (e.g., EPA 2015b, 15). While reportedly designed to ensure that agency staff treat all applicants equally, it undermines inexpe- rienced grassroots organizations that struggle to compete with more experienced and well- funded organizations. Moreover, some EJ advocates argue that agency EJ grant programs discipline and neuter EJ organizations by compelling them to court the agencies, stay busy preparing applications, and compete with each other, rather than collectively challenging the state for stronger environmental regulations and enforcement. My analysis of agencies’ EJ grant programs indicates that they might undermine EJ advocates’ pursuit of stronger regulatory protections in two additional ways. First, agencies’ EJ grant programs may channel EJ organizations away from their longstanding pursuit of change through regulatory and policy reforms and instead toward individualized mechanisms of change (Harrison 2015, 2016).6 Most EJ grant programs’ requests for applications (RFAs) implicitly discourage applicants from proposing projects that pursue environmental change through regulatory or policy mechanisms. Where the San Francisco and New York RFAs list examples of eligible EQB packet page - 67 Government Agencies’ Environmental Justice Efforts 49

projects, most entail individual behavior modification (“teach local residents and school children about the nutritional and public health benefits of growing and eating fresh produce”) and market-based change (“promote purchase of environmentally preferred products and the use of less toxic consumer goods”); none include policy reform, regulatory enforcement, or increasing public participation in regulatory decision-making processes (NYSDEC 2011, 6; San Francisco 2010, 9). U.S. EPA’s program documents encourage industry-friendly collaborations. Notably, its CPS program documents promote collaborations “with various stakeholders such as communities, industry, academic institutions, and others” (EPA 2008, 1). EPA proclaims: “When multiple stakeholders work together, they create a col- lective vision that reflects mutually beneficial goals for all parties” (EPA 2008, 3). Similarly, the U.S. EPA EJ Small Grants RFA specifies that proposals “should include strategies for … building consensus and … should demonstrate collaboration with other stakeholders,” including industry and government agencies (EPA 2013b, 3– 4). Certainly, partnerships can help organizations combine forces to achieve their shared goals (Lee 2005; King 2012; Mock 2014). That said, grant program documents that emphasize collaboration with industry implicitly discourage organizations from proposing activities industry actors would reject, such as advocating for stronger environmental regulations or increased enforcement. The New York program further discourages regulatory reform projects by requiring that funded projects align with the strategic priorities of the Regional Economic Development Council. Applicants must get their local Regional Development Council to verify that the proposed project is consistent with the council’s strategic plan or describe “the economic benefits of the proposed project” (NYSDEC 2016, 12). However, these councils are comprised largely of industry representatives (e.g., NYCREDC 2011, 2), and their strategic plans imply that they would not support projects that would threaten business interests. For example, the first page of the New York City Regional Economic Development Council’s recent strategic plan executive summary states that “Entrepreneurial business formation is hampered by a complex regulatory environment,” and that the council’s plan “is focused on accelerating economic growth” and “seeks to reinforce the prominent industries and large institutions that anchor the city economy” (NYCREDC 2011, 4). Applications that do not include this endorsement or description automatically lose points— in some cases, enough to make the difference EQB packet page - 68 50 Chapter 2

between getting funded or not. Such requirements surely discourage applicants from proposing activities that would upset local industry. Most programs’ funded projects also deviate from EJ advocates’ prioritized model of change. Of the 1,082 funded projects whose description specified a mechanism of change, only 33 percent (352) included actions that hold the state accountable for improving environmental conditions (e.g., organizing residents to participate in regulatory or land-use planning events, or pressing agencies for basic municipal services, stronger environmental regulations, or enforcement of existing laws). Two programs had especially low rates of such projects: San Francisco at 11 percent (6 of 53 projects) and New York at 12 percent (13 of 106 projects). The remaining projects sought change only through nonregulatory means, typically through urging individual residents to modify their own lifestyles (e.g., reducing consumption of fish from contaminated rivers, growing one’s own produce, increasing physical activity, or recycling household waste). Others encourage local industry to voluntarily reduce emissions (e.g., educating truck drivers about diesel idling). Others sought change by providing goods or services (e.g., solar panels or energy audits) at a reduced cost. Only California EPA’s grant program differs from the others in this regard. CalEPA’s RFA explicitly encourages projects aimed at regulatory and policy reform and increasing public participation in environmental decision-making processes, which are featured in its RFA’s stated program goals and example projects (CalEPA 2013, 1, 4). Additionally, 72 percent of its funded projects (67 of 93) pursue change through regulatory and policy mechanisms. In chapters 3 and 7, I offer two explanations for why this program differs from other agencies’ EJ grant programs. To be clear, these nonregulatory projects are not antithetical to EJ. Also, the grant programs allocate more resources into vulnerable and overburdened communities for many valuable activities. However, these funding patterns signal which kinds of projects are most likely to get funded and thereby channel organizations into proposing and conducting such work. Although government grants are not the primary source of EJ organizations’ funding, they do comprise a significant portion of it and thus help shape organizations’ practices and priorities.7 Also, “collaborative” agreements between residents and industry can undermine organizing efforts. Although the EPA Collaborative Problem Solving (CPS) program RFAs list various possible stakeholders that could be involved in collaborative partnerships, and several EPA EJ grant program EQB packet page - 69 Government Agencies’ Environmental Justice Efforts 51

staff asserted that projects need not include all relevant stakeholders, multiple CPS grant recipients told me that they felt pressured by EPA to reach consensus with industry in ways that undermined their own goals. One grantee who proposed to help his community address its concerns about multiple polluting facilities said that EPA required their project “to be totally collaborative.” He lamented that because industry actors in the collaboration rejected most activities residents and activists proposed, they only did activities “that didn’t upset industry.” They addressed indoor air quality, smoking, and diesel bus routes— which he considered “the lowest common denominator”—and were unable to tackle “the big issues” that mattered most to residents. He feels that the project undermined his future organizing prospects, as many residents felt frustrated with his organization for pursuing a limited array of activities.8 Additionally, the programs’ discursive emphasis on and predominance of projects relying on residents and industry actors to voluntarily improve environmental conditions imply that EJ does not require stronger regulatory and policy protections and that residents and industry actors can and should handle those responsibilities. This message about what “EJ” means and requires gets taken up by agency staff, who look to EJ programs to learn about EJ and how they could apply its principles into their own work. Scholars Tianna Bruno and Wendy Jepson (2018) reached similar conclusions in their assessment of EPA’s Environmental Justice Showcase Commu- nities (EJSC) program. For example, they detail how one EJSC project denied that the industrial air and water pollution residents were most concerned about reach harmful levels and focused on teaching residents to care for their own health by changing their household cleaning practices. The authors conclude that “the EJSC programme does not seek to curb, reform, or facilitate environmental regulation. Rather, the EJSC programme activities and priorities focus on decollectivising environmental justice claims and subordi- nating programme interventions to interests of market- based actors. … EJSC programme advanced a vision of environmental justice counter to the core ideals of EJ progressive politics … [and] aligns more with the success and comfort of industry rather than the livelihood, health, and safety of the communities under the burdens of industrial emissions” (278, 285, 289). Second, agencies’ EJ grant programs undermine EJ advocates’ pursuit of stronger environmental restrictions on environmental harms by increasingly emphasizing and funding projects that substantively focus on boosting EQB packet page - 70 52 Chapter 2

environmental amenities without reducing environmental hazards. While all of the programs’ RFAs allow a wide range of projects in terms of their substantive foci, some of the programs’ documents emphasize activities not geared to hazard reduction. Both the New York and San Francisco programs’ RFAs encourage community gardens, nutrition education, parks and trails, and energy efficiency, scarcely mentioning projects that substantially reduce hazards like air and water pollution (NYSDEC 2011, 6; San Fran- cisco 2010, 9). Additionally, the New York program for several years dedicated a certain percentage of its EJ grant funding to “Green Gems” grants that funded projects relating to “parks, open space, community gardens, or green infrastructure” (NYSDEC 2015). Most projects funded by these programs align with the EJ movement’s substantive focus on hazard reduction, with 83 percent of the funded projects (1,267 of 1,533) committed to reducing one or more hazards to health or community (e.g., monitoring air or water for contaminants, collecting other data on toxic “hot spots,” educating subsistence fisherfolk about PCB- contaminated fish, constructing sanitation systems, and improving drinking- water purification and/or storage systems), often in addition to fostering environmental amenities. Only the San Francisco program devi- ates in this regard: just 22 percent of its projects (12 of 54) include activities that reduce environmental hazards in any meaningful way. However, for nearly all of the programs, the portion of funded projects dedicated to hazard reduction has declined over time. The New York program’s projects dedicated to hazard reduction dropped from 92 percent in the first two funding cycles (12 of 13) to 45 percent in the last two cycles (23 of 51). U.S. EPA’s CPS projects dedicated to hazard reduction dropped from 95 percent (38 of 40) in its first two cycles to 65 percent in its latest two cycles (13 of 20). U.S. EPA’s Small Grants projects dedicated to hazard reduction dropped from 91 percent in the first four cycles (351 of 387) to 75 percent in the last four cycles (117 of 155). The San Francisco program’s projects dedicated to hazard reduction dropped from 30 percent in the first few funding cycles (8 of 27) to 15 percent in the most recent four funding cycles (4 of 27). Only the CalEPA program differs from the others in this regard, with its portion of projects dedicated to hazard reduction increasing from 91 percent in the first three cycles (39 of 43) to 93 percent in the latter three cycles (56 of 60). Most agency EJ grant programs are moving away from hazard reduction and increasingly funding projects that develop and maintain community EQB packet page - 71 Government Agencies’ Environmental Justice Efforts 53

gardens, farmers markets, parks, and trails; plant trees; install alternative energy infrastructure or energy- efficient appliances; establish recycling programs; conduct ecological restoration; or educate youth about nutrition, cooking, exercise, or wildlife. Such projects are not, in principle, inconsistent with EJ, and many of these projects provide tangible gains relatively quickly and with comparatively little strife. EJ activists have long framed EJ as including hazard reduction and the provision of environmental amenities. The problem is that, in the grant programs, these other projects are replacing, rather than augmenting, those focused on hazard reduction. The focus on urban greening— and decline of attention to hazards—is made further problematic by the fact that so much greening happens on top of existing hazards without remediating them (Frickel and Elliott 2018).

Conclusion

To date, many environmental regulatory agencies have engaged in valuable efforts to support environmental justice. Yet justice requires that much more be done to ensure that all communities are afforded the same degrees of environmental protection. Twenty- five years have passed since President Clinton signed EO 12898, and state and federal agencies have, by all accounts, made little headway in institutionalizing EJ throughout regulatory practice. Most states have few or no formal EJ efforts. Those that do have increased public participation in regulatory decision-making procedures but done little to systematically reduce hazards in overburdened communities and foster environmental equity across communities. Some agency EJ efforts may even undermine EJ advocates’ pursuit of stronger environmental protections. In chapter 8, I recommend numerous ways agencies can support environmental justice: strengthening basic EJ infrastructure (EJ policies, EJ staff, and EJ trainings for other employees); more meaningfully fostering public participation so that communities can influence regulatory decisions; integrating EJ reforms in core regulatory practice that would systematically reduce cumulative impacts in overburdened and vulnerable communities and achieve greater environmental equity across communities; conducting targeted, agency-wide and cross-agency improvements in overburdened and vulnerable communities; strengthening EJ grant programs to support critical EJ organizations working to influence regulatory practice; EQB packet page - 72 54 Chapter 2

and developing robust accountability measures to ensure that agencies meet these goals. To be clear, I do not mean to imply that such changes are easy. Changing regulatory practice is always difficult and slow, and the most robust and important EJ reforms are unprecedented and not obvious to staff. Reforming agency practice in line with EJ principles will require considerable collaboration and deliberation. Why has it been so hard for agencies to accomplish these goals? To make progress on institutionalizing EJ principles into regulatory practice, we need to identify and confront the factors that have constrained agencies’ EJ efforts to date. The rest of this book turns to this task— to unpacking the factors that thwart the efforts of EJ staff, even those working in agencies with EJ policies and EJ-supportive leadership. I will explain why, even under the best of circumstances, agencies’ EJ efforts leave so much to be desired. I first turn to the set of factors agency representatives consistently identify to explain the slow pace of their agencies’ EJ efforts: limited resources, regulatory authority, and analytical tools. Because this set of explanations is made so unfailingly, I call this the “standard narrative.” As I will show, the standard narrative is not unwarranted; the constraints it highlights present significant obstacles to agency staff striving to implement EJ reforms. How- ever, it also obscures as much as it reveals and does not fully explain agencies’ disappointing progress on environmental justice. I then turn to the heart of the book, showing that agencies’ EJ efforts are constrained by elements of regulatory culture— pushback from coworkers who see EJ reforms as antithetical to their organization’s identity (chapters 4–6), as well as the fact that some EJ staff define “environmental justice” in ways that deviate from longstanding EJ movement principles (chapter 7). EQB packet page - 73

4 “We Do Ecology, Not Sociology”: Staff Narratives That Undermine EJ

We are pushing against something that does not want to be disturbed. — Janine, an EJ- supportive, government agency staff person

You are pushing against a brick wall in every single direction. Internally with staff at the state agency, I felt like, with a lot of people, I was pushing against a brick wall all day just to move it a centimeter. — Mary, government agency EJ staff person

Cultural Resistance to Environmental Justice

In my interviews with agency staff about the challenges facing their agency’s EJ efforts, they all first identified one or more of the factors beyond their control that I described in chapter 3: limited resources, regulatory authority, and/or analytical tools. In particular, they lament that staff across the agencies are regularly asked to do more with less, under heightened scrutiny and criticism. That said, at every agency in my study, including those whose leadership has explicitly endorsed EJ principles, nearly all of the staff I interviewed who help implement their agency’s EJ efforts described facing resistance to EJ from some of their own coworkers now and in the past. EJ staff at every agency in my study described their EJ work as always having been “a battle” or a “struggle.” For example, Michael, who has helped propose EJ reforms in his agency for many years, stated that “[m]any offices are absolutely hostile to the notion of EJ.” Barbara stated, “Lots of folks at _____ [this agency] think that we should not be doing EJ.” Penny described her EJ work as “isolating” and that she and the other EJ staff in her agency EQB packet page - 74 84 Chapter 4

“face a lot of resistance” from other staff. Nicky summed up her years of experience as an EJ staff person at multiple agencies this way: “It’s just this total resistance.” An EJ staff person at EPA noted that “even when the wind was at our backs, like it was in the Obama administration,” getting staff to implement EJ reforms “is like pulling teeth. With the exception of only a few people, no one here is excited about EJ.” EJ staff and their EJ-supportive colleagues conveyed that they are deeply frustrated by the cultural constraints to EJ. The EJ staff I interviewed have been doing this work for many years, some for over two decades. They described this pushback against EJ and colleagues’ failure to make a good-faith effort to integrate EJ into regulatory practice as longstanding, transcending political administrations, exhausting, and disheartening. I asked EJ staff and their EJ- supportive coworkers to explain for me what gave them these impressions: things their colleagues have said or otherwise done that undermine EJ reforms to regulatory practice. Additionally, in my interviews with staff and observations of agency meetings, I documented ways that bureaucrats discursively challenged or otherwise undermined EJ staff and the reforms they propose. As organizational theorists have noted, organizational inertia in the face of pressures for change from social movements and other actors in the organizational field is something that requires work (Lawrence 2008). This resistance to change is frequently hard to see, as it is often conducted by non-elite organization members in everyday interactions. In this chapter and in chapter 5, I identify those everyday practices through which environmental regulatory agency staff resist proposed EJ reforms. In this chapter, I show that environmental regulatory agency staff promoting EJ reforms experience a working environment in which organization members are allowed to discursively challenge EJ reforms. I make this case by identifying how bureaucrats, with each other and with me, vocally contest and delegitimize proposed EJ reforms, and I specify the work this pushback accomplishes. The narratives I will showcase are often directed toward EJ principles in general. Where they are levied against a specific EJ reform proposal, I indicate that in the text. EJ staff did not want to name colleagues engaging in these practices; instead, they focused our conversation on the discourses they found troubling. As I discuss in the appendix, my data do not allow me to determine how widespread these narratives are. However, EJ staff and their EJ- supportive EQB packet page - 75 “We Do Ecology, Not Sociology” 85

coworkers report that they face these kinds of claims regularly enough that they undermine efforts to integrate EJ principles into regulatory practice, and they rarely mentioned managers or other staff challenging these narratives. In making these arguments, I employ a constructionist approach to analyzing discourse of environmental regulatory agency staff. The words, phrases, stories, and other elements of narrative expression that we use to characterize people, things, events, and phenomena do a lot of work—they shape our understanding of how things are, as well as how things should be. Rather than seeing language as an objective description of the world around us, I am interested in how the particular language we use constructs our understanding of how the world is. Thus, I examine how staff debate the merits of proposed EJ reforms with each other and with me— how they negotiate and define what kinds of reforms (if any) are reasonable— and identify the consequences of those interactions for the institutionalization of EJ principles into regulatory practice. In this chapter, I showcase how some staff reject proposed EJ reforms, identify what makes these claims persuasive and problematic, and specify the forms of power the various speakers wield. I conclude by identifying how EJ- supportive staff circumvent and confront colleagues’ narrative pushback against EJ.

Casting EJ as Conflicting with the Agency’s Identity

Many EJ staff stated that their EJ reforms are stymied by colleagues’ assertions that EJ proposals conflict with the identity of the organization. Orga- nization members make claims about the organization’s identity and “who we are” to ward off calls for change (Alvesson 2011; Kenny, Whittle, and Willmott 2016; Kreiner and Murphy 2016; Lawrence 2008; Pratt et al. 2016; Scott 2014). I draw on scholarship that takes a process-oriented, social con- structivist approach to organizational identity that shows how it is a “never ending ‘work- in- progress’” (Pratt et al. 2016, 11): a continual, interactive, narrative, and behavioral process through which organization members strive to defend the organization’s status quo. In some cases, such claims are quite general. For example, Steve told me that a manager in his agency’s air pollution division said to him, “There is serious stuff we are doing, like protecting air. And then there is this periph- eral stuff: EJ, Title VI.” Staff often frame EJ as contrary to the agency’s identity by characterizing EJ as a fleeting “fad” or “trend”—and one they do not EQB packet page - 76 86 Chapter 4

regard highly. At agencies whose politically appointed leadership endorses EJ, staff sometimes dismissively characterize proposed EJ reforms as “just the politics du jour”— as something that will fade with the next administration. Penny, who was only a few months into her EJ staff position at the time of our interview, told me that her coworkers had already characterized EJ as “a trend” and said to her, “As soon as the executive leaves, it will be back to business as usual.” Some also say, “‘How much time do you have again?,’ remind- ing you that you are appointed and you are probably going to be out in a year, and they will still be here.” Such accounts echo scholars’ observations that organization members often resist change through “condescending reactions that trivialize the proposal for change” (Fernandez 2015, 385; see also Burke 2018, 132). Similarly, Elise told me that some of her colleagues are “resistant,” “describing EJ as a ‘fad’ or a ‘trend’ … [or] ‘flavor of the month’” in casual conversation. Esther said that some of her coworkers would say about EJ: “It is a boutique program: it’s here today, it’s gone tomorrow.” These narratives diminish EJ reforms as marginal to the agency’s “true” work. So too does the argument, made many staff, that EJ practices are only the purview of EJ staff and not the responsibility of other agency members.

Disciplinary Training Other EJ staff described how some colleagues define EJ as inconsistent with what the agency is and does by drawing disciplinary boundaries between EJ staff and the rest of the agency. In separate interviews, two staff at one agency noted that someone wrote a (now famous) memo to an EJ staff person rejecting their report about racial environmental inequality by asserting, “[This agency] does ecology, not sociology.” Esther described to me how she would implore permit writers and rulewriting staff, “You have got to look at the demographics, you have got to look at the impact [of permits and rules] on these communities,” to which they would respond, “We don’t do sociological work.” Such narratives dismiss EJ analysis as beyond the bounds of what their organization does. Drawing these distinctions among staff is a rhetorical technique called “boundary work.” Gieryn (1999) showed that scientists actively draw boundaries between “scientific” and “non-scientific” knowledge to continually reestablish their intellectual authority. Such narratives echo the boundaries between “science” and “politics” that other scholars have observed scientists use to cast EJ politics beyond the realm of an organization’s responsibility (Holifield 2004; Ottinger 2013). EQB packet page - 77 “We Do Ecology, Not Sociology” 87

I observed staff employ this boundary work. For example, I attended an EJ training for a team of staff. The training included a short video describing some roots of environmental inequalities; the video presented data on racial wealth inequality and argued that it stems not from an individual’s work ethic but largely from racism, unequal funding for public education, and other social structural factors. Immediately following the video, the team’s manager, Bob, angrily and stridently instructed the EJ staff leading the training to “be careful,” proclaiming “there aren’t any data to back up those stats” shown in the video and asserting, twice, “You’re talking to scientists.” Framing content as unsubstantiated carries a lot of weight in environmental regulatory agencies that identify as science-based organizations. By asserting his professional status as a “scientist” and implying that the video content was unscientific, Bob authorized himself to discredit the video, despite the fact that the material on EJ was beyond his realm of expertise. Additionally, as the senior person in the room, he implicitly authorized his staff to challenge or ignore the EJ training material and made it difficult for them to defend it. Managers’ practices matter considerably, because they have the power to require their staff implement EJ reforms— and the discretion to not do so.

Expertise EJ- supportive staff described colleagues using other forms of boundary work to dismiss EJ reforms. Notably, some staff frame community engagement practices as violating their agency’s identity as an organization within which decisions are made by professional experts with advanced academic training. For example, Janine described trying to get engineers and scientists in her agency to take seriously input from residents who are not formally trained as experts. She said that they push back, saying, “Why should I solicit input from the public when I was hired to make these decisions myself?” Such narratives frame residents as lacking the sufficient expertise to provide legitimate input into regulatory decisions. Elizabeth noted that some colleagues disparage community engagement by saying that community activism undermines proper environmental reforms. To illustrate, she said that “a manager” lambasted community engagement: “This is a quote, ‘Don’t these people know that this is the most important rule that the agency is putting out this year and we have to protect this rule?’ … That was one line out of a probably 20- minute tirade.” Such claims frame EQB packet page - 78 88 Chapter 4

community input as obstructing, rather than strengthening, environmental protections. My interview with Jackie, an EJ staff member, indicated that her coworkers convey their lack of regard for community input through how they characterize the task of translating regulatory documents into publicly accessible language. They say dismissively, “‘Oh, I’m going to take these documents, I have got to dumb them down.’ … We hear that, ‘Oh you’ve got to dumb that down,’ which is so insulting. No, you don’t have to ‘dumb it down.’ You just need to translate it in a way that meets your target audience … in terms they can identify with.” Similarly, Sara described how her coworker Tim, a manager who voluntarily joined the internal group of staff representing and leading EJ efforts in the agency, rejected EJ staff members’ calls for community engagement in a recent proposed regulation. Tim would declare: “It is a very high-level technical regulation. They [the community] probably won’t understand it. They probably won’t understand the need for it. They probably don’t have any experience in engineering or science. So, what are they going to tell us about this regulation that would make us change it?” Such narratives establish that the agency’s decisions should only be made by formally trained experts and thus that public input has no role in regulatory decision- making. Sara further lamented that some coworkers dismiss EJ advocates’ input as unreasonable: “The other thing that I hear a lot is, ‘Well, they always ask us for things that we can’t do. Why do we talk to community members anyway? They just want us to move ____ [an oil refinery]. They just want us to re-route ____ [a freeway]. We can’t do that, so why are we talking to them?’” Many bureaucrats have made similar comments to me. To be sure, communities often do want the facilities moved or other outcomes that might exceed an agency’s authority. Yet this narrative problematically frames community input as only unreasonable— that community members cannot produc- tively contribute to regulatory decision- making. Other scholars have shown that scientists, regulatory officials, and industry actors draw boundaries that cast EJ and other community activists as unscientific, uneducated, irrational, “emotional,” or otherwise lacking legitimacy (Allen 2003, 2004; Bell 2016; Brown 2007; DiChiro 1998; Espeland 1998; Har- rison 2011; Kimura 2016; Kurtz 2007; Ottinger 2013). Much of this delegiti- mization is gendered. Conversational norms in government settings afford deference and respect to certain (white, male) ways of speaking and foster disparagement of people who use other styles of talk; elites often dismiss women EQB packet page - 79 “We Do Ecology, Not Sociology” 89

activists as “hysterical” or “irrational”; and activists are often denigrated for failing to comply with dominant gender norms (e.g., notions that women should focus on mothering and be “polite” rather than angry, and that men should support local industry and be “tough” in the face of environmental hazards). These scholars have shown that residents can contribute valuable observational data of illnesses and pollution and suggest new explanations for illness clusters. Elites’ boundary work undermines the legitimacy of community members and EJ staff to participate in regulatory decision- making, and it marginalizes their concerns about environmental hazards.

Bureaucratic Neutrality In many cases, staff undermine EJ staff members or the reforms they propose, or both, by asserting that they violate the agency’s need to be neutral. Bureaucratic neutrality is a key norm within government agencies. Staff invoke it regularly, framing their organization as a neutral actor that uses science to make correct and unbiased decisions and withstands inevitable criticism from all stakeholders. Staff members’ pushback against EJ reforms invokes bureaucratic neutrality in various ways. For example, in cases where EJ- supportive staff members’ recommendations reflect those of community members, some coworkers dismiss those staff by casting their agreement with EJ activists as violating the agency’s commitment to bureaucratic neutrality. In my interview with Paula, she did this when she disparaged her agency’s EJ staff as biased for agreeing with EJ activists in a contested rulemaking decision. She described how EJ activists had criticized a recently revised regulation that she had helped work on: “It was still the same canned, ‘Okay, you still suck, _____ [name of agency].’” She characterized her agency’s EJ staff as mindlessly following those activists:

Our EJ guys in our EJ office were calling us up saying, “This sucks.” … They didn’t bother listening to us, either. They were purely blowing with the wind. _____ [a particular EJ activist] requested meetings with all the high- ups in _____ [the agency] and blah, blah, blah, and came and said all these things. … [At a key moment very late in the process, the lead EJ staff person] said, “Oh, this [regulation] is weak.” He didn’t know anything about it. He was just talking to _____ [the EJ activist]. … They were all kind of like one coalition. They all seemed to speak with the same voice. If one person was going to say, “This sucks,” we didn’t hear any countering opinion. Everybody was like, “Yeah, he’s right. This sucks.” Everything was fine until the head guy gets a phone call from the head guy on the outside or whatever and then it’s all bad. EQB packet page - 80 90 Chapter 4

Paula derides the activists’ opinions by characterizing them as using “the same canned” criticisms of the agency. By claiming that the agency’s EJ staff had no objections to the regulation language until one phone call from one activist, she is able to denigrate EJ staff as puppets controlled by activists (“purely blowing with the wind”) and not listening to reasonable scientists. These framings unilaterally dismiss their objections as unfounded and biased. Additionally, she grossly misrepresents EJ activists’ access to and control over regulatory decision-making— the suggestion that EJ activists can demand meetings with high- level regulatory officials (“the high- ups”) does not match EJ activists’ experiences. In other cases, bureaucrats invoke claims of bureaucratic neutrality by denigrating EJ staff who had prior experience in EJ activist organizations. These narratives frame the agency as comprised of disinterested servants dedicated to serving “the public” and, in contrast, EJ activists as exploiting the public for biased, partisan, or otherwise non-neutral ends. For instance, Elise, who previously had worked for EJ organizations, told me that “a high- level manager” in her agency disparaged her as a “professional activist”:

She described how she knows that I used to be a professional activist. And she was referencing another group of people in a community that were professional activists and making a very clear distinction between professional activists and community. … In spending decades in this work, she had become pretty jaded about activists … and saw them working at odds with community members who she is trying to help. … Her perspective on that has certainly permeated her leadership in her division. Very clear boundaries and lines [are] drawn between community members who are living near a project [hazardous site], and the professional activists who don’t have the true interests of the community in mind and have their own agenda.

Importantly, this manager holds considerable authority and conveys to her subordinates her disdain for EJ advocates. Certainly, some activists do not faithfully represent the interests of the communities they claim to defend. However, many EJ advocacy organizations work hard to avoid this problem. Also, decisions by government agencies and industry actors rarely serve the interests of marginalized communities. Yet industry and state actors often use this narrative of “outside agitators” or “outside activists” to delegitimize environmental activist organizations (Lerner 2005; Ottinger 2013; Pellow 2004). Staff often reject the core EJ principle that staff should direct extra resources to communities whose demographic characteristics render them disproportionately vulnerable to the effects of exposure to hazards, arguing EQB packet page - 81 “We Do Ecology, Not Sociology” 91

that such practice violates the agency’s commitment to treating industry actors fairly. For example, Richard was active in his agency’s EJ efforts but stridently opposed most of the EJ reform proposals. In our interview, I asked him to explain his opposition. He said that the proposed EJ reforms violate the agency’s responsibility to ensure a “level playing field” for industry: “It would be very unfair of any government agency to go out to this area and say, just because you [facility] are in an industrial area, and just because there is a socioeconomic problem, if you will call it a problem, whereby the poor have to live in your area because that is all they can afford—We can’t enforce a stricter set of standards on them based on [compared to] somebody [another facility] that is not in that area. Because that does not create a level playing field, from a business standpoint. [It is] unethical, in my opinion, for us to do something like that.” He disparaged as unfair the proposals that the agency make an extra effort to reduce environmental hazards in low- income communities, communities of color, or environmentally overburdened communities, because they would require concessions from polluters in those areas and not others. Throughout our interview, he reiterated this insistence that the agency must maintain a “level playing field” for industry and thus should not take community context into account when deter- mining a facility’s permit conditions, identifying enforcement priorities, or other regulatory work. In his opinion, doing so would violate this aspect of his agency’s identity. I attended multiple EJ meetings at his agency and personally observed him and others stridently reject all but the most minimal proposed EJ reforms by proclaiming the need to “maintain a level playing field” for industry. EJ- supportive staff there told me that such denounce- ments have stymied their efforts to design and implement EJ programs. Staff, like Richard, who lack formal authority over EJ staff can nonetheless undermine proposed EJ reforms by stonewalling, especially because agencies usually develop EJ reforms through consensus- based decision- making. Similarly, many staff insist that using demographic data to determine communities’ vulnerabilities to harm from exposure to environmental hazards violates agencies’ commitment to treating all communities equally. Paul, an EJ staff person, described how staff rebuke his proposed EJ programs: “They say, ‘I already do EJ. I give everybody the same opportunity. … We treat everyone equally.’” I observed staff use this narrative to reject proposed EJ reforms. For example, Tim insisted that proposed EJ reforms are EQB packet page - 82 92 Chapter 4

“unnecessary” because “we are doing the same thing for people regardless of who they are and where they live.” Often, this pushback explicitly asserts that the race- conscious nature of EJ reforms violates their organization’s neutrality. At all organizations in my study, much of the discursive resistance to EJ that I witnessed and was told about focused on the fact that proposed EJ reforms explicitly identify and seek to reduce, among other things, racial environmental inequalities. For example, Elizabeth stated that “some staff and managers” disparage proposed EJ reforms by characterizing them as “reverse racism. [They say,] ‘Why should those communities of color get this extra treatment? We need to protect that middle-class white community, too.’” Neutrality, which is important in government agencies, means ignoring racial inequality. Such statements reflect dominant racial ideology in the United States today. Bonilla- Silva (2014), Lipsitz (1995), Omi and Winant (2015), and other contemporary race scholars show that popular “colorblind” narratives like “I don’t see race,” and “post-racial” claims that success comes from hard work and hardships from one’s own failings rather than racism or government policies, frame racism as limited to conscious prejudice and located in the past rather than as an ongoing systemic phenomenon. Such “colorblind” narratives assert a commitment to abstract liberalist notions of racial equality while, at the same time, ignoring the “racialized social system” in which industry practices, social democratic government reforms, and neoliberal regulatory rollback have systematically, disproportionately afforded material resources to whites (Bonilla- Silva 2014). These narratives recast race-conscious civil rights policies (such as affirmative action programs and agencies’ EJ reforms) as “reverse racism”—unfairly discriminat- ing against and taking resources away from whites. Importantly, scholars show that people wield these narratives “even when they are well- meaning and intend to be non-racist,” thereby “debunking the idea that racial reproduction rests on intentional, malevolent, or politically conservative white actors” (Mueller 2017, 221). Building on scholarship showing that government institutions, including their staff, play key roles in producing and policing racial categories and racial meanings (Bonilla- Silva 2014; Goldberg 2002; Kurtz 2009; Lipsitz 1995; Mascarenhas 2016; Moore and Bell 2017; Omi and Winant 2015; Park and Pellow 2004; Pellow 2018; Pulido 2000, 2015; Richter 2017; Tay- lor 2014a), my findings demonstrate how some environmental regulatory EQB packet page - 83 “We Do Ecology, Not Sociology” 93

agency staff use colorblind and post-racial narratives to reject EJ reforms as violating their commitment to bureaucratic neutrality, in turn bolstering a regulatory system that has disproportionately protected whites. Wendy Moore and Joyce Bell (2017) explain that people widely appeal to impartiality and neutrality to preclude acknowledgement that government institutions have ignored and reinforced racial inequality and to reject calls for institutional reforms that would reduce those inequalities: “Color- blind racist discourse … often takes place through an espoused commitment to ‘abstract liberalist’ discursive tenets, which profess rhetorical commitment to equality of opportunity and, at the same time, minimize the contemporary relevance of the history of explicit racial oppression as well as contemporary institutional and structural mechanisms that perpetuate racial inequality” (101; see also Evans and Moore 2015). Bureaucrats’ pushback against EJ reforms illustrates this work that colorblind narratives do. One EJ staff person who has led video-guided EJ trainings for staff showed me the following anonymous feedback submitted by a coworker, who used colorblind arguments to reject as unfair the EJ training and other proposed EJ reforms designed to reduce racial environmental inequalities:

The whole idea of this thing is based on a lie. There are many people that I have spoken to about this training that fundamentally disagree with what EJ purports to do. In the minds of many common sense folk this is nothing but propaganda. The lady in the video basically eludes that everything we do is racist, whether that’s in the work environment, during our leisure time, or just as individuals. Not true at all. … The training also concludes that when in doubt just blame a white person for your life circumstances if they are bad. I think that is the most racist thing I’ve seen in a long time. What I would change would [be] to have this training be taken out of the department. Having it be mandatory is the type of social engineering BS that the department and country does not want. It’s Hitler- eske [sic]. … Working hard and getting ahead in life is colorblind and not racist, just like the vast vast majority of people in this country.

By stating unequivocally that “the department and country” are “not racist,” this staff member frames the EJ training and proposed EJ reforms that acknowledge racial inequalities as themselves “racist” and thus unjust. Rather, justice requires being “colorblind.” Key here is the fact that bureaucracies and their staff are expected to be neutral. Thus, even though these organizations’ procedures have disproportionately benefitted whites, organization members reject EJ reforms EQB packet page - 84 94 Chapter 4

as violating the guiding principle of bureaucracy itself: impartiality. Race- conscious policies like EJ reforms are confusing to many staff and something to defend their organization against. Accordingly, staff can critically portray those promoting EJ reforms as biased or selfish, or both. Numerous EJ staff told me that colleagues vaguely disparage EJ reforms as unjustifi- ably trying to hoard resources for a particular group of racial minorities. For instance, Peter recounted that coworkers derided elected officials advocating EJ policies as doing so “for their own political purposes … for getting and maintaining the support of their constituents.” Similarly, Peter said they accused him of using EJ as a way to “self- promote” and “opportu- nistically” look after his own self interests. Such narratives delegitimize EJ reforms as unwarranted and those who promote them as self- serving. There are numerous variations of this narrative. Some staff invoke norms of bureaucratic neutrality to delegitimize EJ reforms by claiming that discrimination can happen to anyone and thus that EJ reforms giving “special treatment” to racially marginalized communities are unfair. Richard, a white man, used this narrative in our interview. He unapologetically explained to me that he proactively got involved in— and “put his heart into”— his agency’s EJ planning efforts to enforce his belief that attending to race and racial inequalities is patently unfair and violates his agency’s norm of bureaucratic neutrality:

You want somebody to really put their heart into something? Give them a say in it. … Somebody could have lived it. I lived it, to be honest with you. I’ll give you a brief story. I was an undergraduate, I’m a white male, right? And I walked into a [government agency] office and I put in an application for employment. And the lady sitting who accepted my application looked at me, and she said this, and I’ll never forget it, what, 25 years ago or whenever it was. She said, “I’ll accept your application, but I don’t think you’re going to get called back, because they are looking for a woman or a minority.” And I just remember thinking to myself, do you realize what you just said to me is discrimination? Which wraps itself back into EJ: race, right? [Voice rises] … To have somebody look me in the eye and say that to me, it went straight to my soul, and I have not forgotten it to this day. Because I was qualified. I was eligible. I never got a call. That was just as much discriminatory as somebody who encountered this daily based on their race, religion, et cetera. So. You don’t have to be of a certain classification, if you will, to experience this. I think it happens across the board. Coming back to your question earlier about why I am involved in EJ, I think a level playing field for everybody is very important. This isn’t just about one group. … This is America. We all need to be equal, regardless, period, end of story. EQB packet page - 85 “We Do Ecology, Not Sociology” 95

By asserting that discrimination happens to everyone, Richard can deny actually existing racial inequalities, and he actively shapes the EJ planning process to make the agency’s EJ efforts be as thin as possible. By wield- ing a strident commitment to neutrality, he legitimizes his efforts as part of a broadly embraced element of organization identity. Richard’s comment reflects the racial narratives that are institutionalized in U.S. society. As Teeger (2015) explains: “Drawing on ideas of individualism and meritocracy, adher- ents to colorblindness resist acknowledging the racist structuring of society. As a result, they actively oppose race-conscious policies aimed at redressing these inequities, allowing the status quo of racial inequality to continue unfettered” (1177). Richard’s efforts matter. He vocally frames EJ reforms as “reverse discrimination” that violate agency identity to rationalize making his agency’s EJ reforms voluntary rather than required. As I observed at one of his agency’s EJ planning meetings, as he reiterated in our interview, and as his colleagues confirmed, he vocally insists that the agency should make EJ a suggestion— a voluntary practice that staff can do if they so choose—and not mandatory. Given the various material and cultural constraints against EJ reforms, staff are unlikely to implement them unless they are mandated. Moreover, in his organization, EJ reforms are based on consensus; thus, even one person is able to limit what the agency’s EJ reforms will be. EJ- supportive staff emphasize that not all of their colleagues push back against EJ reforms in this way. However, colorblindness, being institutionalized throughout U.S. society, constitutes a discursive resource anyone can draw on to protect “a racially unequal status quo from challenge” (Teeger 2015, 1177). In this case, staff deploy these narratives to defend the way they do their work. EJ- supportive staff also explained that colleagues rarely express such beliefs beyond the setting of a private conversation. For example, Elizabeth, quoted earlier, noted, “I have heard people make these kinds of statements in meetings and in one-on- one conversations, [but] behind closed doors, people will be much more frank than in a meeting.” I asked her to recommend a colleague who asserts that EJ reforms constitute reverse racism and would discuss those concerns with me. She paused, considered a few possibilities, and decided she couldn’t: “They know to avoid saying those things to you.” Eliza- beth’s account characterizes her workplace as one in which colleagues use colorblind narratives to discredit proposed EJ reforms, but that they would rarely express these ideas in settings researchers could observe. EJ staff at other EQB packet page - 86 96 Chapter 4

agencies made this same point to me. Thus, what makes Richard’s statement so striking is not only that he explains that he waters down his agency’s EJ efforts because he feels that one affirmative action- type decision wronged him decades ago, but also that he said it to me, an outside researcher (a sociologist!) he had just met. Elizabeth’s point is that other staff deploy such narratives but would not do so with me. Thus, EJ staff members’ accounts of their coworkers’ shop talk provide crucial insights into constraints facing EJ reforms, as their experiences cannot usually be observed by outside researchers. Chana Teeger (2015) observes that colorblindness enables people to rec- oncile the dilemmas entailed in explicitly confronting racial inequality. In the case of environmental regulatory agencies, EJ reforms offend staff members’ identities as neutral public stewards and ask them to do new tasks at a time when agencies’ authority and resources are under attack, in turn making staff defensive and producing conflict in staff meetings. I observed even EJ- supportive staff use colorblind narratives to resolve tensions inherent in discussions about environmental injustice. For example, this occurred in a meeting I attended in which about twenty representatives from across one agency came together with EJ staff to develop EJ reform proposals. About thirty minutes of the meeting was dedicated to a presentation and discussion about a recent local controversy in which the agency discovered an underground plume of a toxic contaminant within what was characterized as a “low-income EJ area.” A white male staff person gave a presentation about the issue. He noted that, after the agency announced its water monitoring findings about the high concentrations of the contaminant in local drinking water and advised the community to drink bottled water, community members were very upset, asking when government agencies would clean up the contamination and who would provide the bottled water. He concluded by stating that all of the agencies involved feel that they do not have the resources to pay for remediation or bottled water, and then he casually noted, offhandedly, “Everybody wants a handout.” The group pro- ceeded to discuss the issue, asking the presenter technical questions about the case, which most of them appeared to have not known about until this meeting. One of the EJ staff members in the room, a white woman who has helped lead the EJ efforts at her agency for several years, commented to the group: “The politics and language would be different if this happened in _____ [a nearby predominantly white, relatively wealthy community]. We EQB packet page - 87 “We Do Ecology, Not Sociology” 97

wouldn’t say, ‘They are looking for a handout.’” Conversation paused. Her comment established agencies as active participants in the production of environmental inequalities. This is an uncomfortable assertion for staff of organizations tasked with being impartial. The group resolved this discom- fort by retreating to colorblind claims that the agency would not unwittingly treat some communities differently than others. The presenter disagreed with her, saying “It would be the same” and defensively repeating that the agency would treat any community in the same way. Several other meeting participants also quickly denounced her suggestion that agency members could be implicitly, unconsciously biased against working- class communities. No one came to her defense, agreed with her, challenged those who disagreed with her, or asked her to explain her comment. In my fieldnotes, I wrote that several “pushed back against her, seemed quite defensive of the department.” Notably, this pushback even came from Norah, another (white) EJ staff person in the room, who asserted that differences among communities in how their environmental issues are resolved stem not from differential treatment by the agency but instead from the fact that wealthier, white communities have the resources to scientifically document their problems. Cer- tainly, Norah’s latter point is valid— an agency is more likely to take action on environmental issues when scientific documentation substantiates the problem, and wealthier communities have more resources to recruit such scientific assistance. Yet Norah and the others foreclosed racially conscious discussion and learning about how agencies serve white, relatively wealthy communities better than others and ways agency practice could be reformed to redress this inequality. This group leads the agency’s EJ efforts and is thus the space most likely to support critical reflection; indeed, Kellogg (2009) has shown that creating teams of reform- oriented staff is essential for institut- ing organizational change in other contexts. These snapshots of staff inter- action illustrate techniques through which people maintain the ideologies of post- racism and colorblindness in ways that reconstruct ignorance about and mystify solutions to contemporary mechanisms of racial inequality (as Mueller 2017, Teeger 2015, and others have done in other contexts). In other cases, staff reject proposed EJ reforms by asserting that the colorblind interpretation of neutrality is codified in law, such that agencies cannot lawfully take into account communities’ racial and other demographic characteristics. For example, Nicky, who worked at multiple EQB packet page - 88 98 Chapter 4

government agencies, elaborated that some coworkers stridently rejected many proposed EJ reforms by asserting that taking race into account would violate the law, even after top agency attorneys vouched for the legal- ity of the reforms she was proposing. Specifically, the attorneys clarified that agencies’ decisions cannot be based “solely on race,” and thus that EJ analyses can take community racial characteristics into account— along with other pertinent variables, such as air quality, truck traffic, and asthma rates— to target enforcement efforts, allocate grants, and other practices. Nevertheless, “When you have any of those conversations [about proposed EJ reforms], you will always find some white person will say, ‘We can’t do that, because the law says we can’t do that.’ … One of the most challenging things in all of the meetings we were having was someone would always bring up this thing, ‘We can’t do that. We can’t base anything on race.’” Notably, “always,” “in all of the meetings,” Nicky had to spend time addressing this discursive rejection of proposed EJ reforms, despite the fact that those reforms were approved by top agency attorneys. I witnessed this myself at her former organization. One of her former colleagues, Dan, a white man, said during my interview with him that he and “a lot” of his coworkers feel strongly that his agency should not take communities’ racial characteristics into account at all: “The biggest thing I would change would be … to have the state definition—the official definition—of what an ‘environmental justice community’ is to be based on the actual conditions on the ground, rather than the demographics, rather than the poverty and the race composition. … I always try to make this argument, and a lot of the other people were, too.” To explain, he insisted repeatedly that the agency was prohibited by law from taking communities’ racial characteristics into account during regulatory efforts. “It’s illegal to use race as the sole criteria for government policy.” Yet, in reviewing his agency’s EJ programs and policies, I found no evidence that any of its EJ decisions “use race as the sole criteria,” nor did EJ staff at his agency indicate to me that they thought they should be. Having to spend so much time debating this point stymied the ability of Nicky and other EJ staff to make progress on integrating EJ into regulatory practice. Moreover, bureaucrats make discursive commitments to race neutrality and formal equality to defend existing regulatory practice that supports and ignores racially unequal protections from environmental harm. EQB packet page - 89 “We Do Ecology, Not Sociology” 99

Prejudiced Disparagement

Some staff delegitimize EJ programs by using prejudiced arguments that working- class communities, those of color in particular, are undeserving of government assistance. For example, Rose told me that, when she first proposed an EJ grant program to fund community- based organizations working to reduce environmental hazards, “Inside the agency, they started scream- ing and hollering: ‘Are you crazy? . … They don’t know how to do paper- work. … They’ll be out buying cars and televisions.’” This pushback, rooted in a stereotype of low-income people as irresponsible, was so severe that Rose had to implement unprecedented restrictions on how the grants could be spent. Additionally, this motivated her to keep the grants small in size. She recalled deciding, “To keep people off my back, I’m going to make sure that that the money isn’t a lot. Maybe about $20,000, $25,000— no more than that. I didn’t want to go beyond that. Because I knew the oversight was going to be terrible.” I witnessed staff discursively wield racist prejudice along with postra- cial narratives to disparage proposed EJ reforms. In my interview with Dan, he expressed considerable criticism of his agency’s EJ efforts. When I asked how he would change them if he could, he responded that he would remove discussion of race from the agency’s EJ policy and not take a community’s racial composition into account when doing its regulatory work. He explained that he opposes race- conscious EJ programs and reforms largely because communities of color do not deserve assistance from government agencies:

Community of color and poverty don’t correlate the way they used to. … South Asian communities [have] incomes that would blow mine out of the water. They are making two or three times what I’m making, their average income. Under _____ [the agency’s] definition, they still qualify as environmental justice communities, because they are communities of color. They are living in McMansions there, but they still qualify as communities of color—people aren’t white for the most part— and so they’re still called EJ communities. I don’t think that should be the case. I don’t think environmental justice should be targeted towards communities that can pretty much take care of themselves and don’t need our help. … The latest wave of immigrants into _____ [this region] is Russians. Under the criteria, they are white. They are impoverished, they are fleeing political oppression, they are fleeing terrible conditions back in Russia. They come here, they’re in really hard shape. Really having a tough time of it. And they aren’t EQB packet page - 90 100 Chapter 4

people of color. So, it’s difficult to have them covered under the EJ policy. … One of the directors of the EJ office asked me this question one time: “Why on earth would anyone want to live in an EJ community?” My answer was, “Because you get all these extra benefits from the government.” … Your community can win a bunch of money from the government. You can get a big infusion of cash from the government, in addition to other help from the government if you qualify as an EJ community. … So that’s why I think the definition of environmental justice community should be more refined and based on the actual conditions, targeted towards the communities that really do need the help and really are dealing with environmental burdens, really are dealing with health burdens, really are dealing with food deserts and that kind of thing. And not because the majority of the people there don’t happen to have whatever qualifies as white skin.

Dan frames his agency’s EJ programs as giving undeserving communities of color tremendous cash while whites (here, Russian immigrants) are unfairly excluded. Dan’s assertion that communities benefitting from the state’s EJ efforts do not actually have environmental problems is inaccurate— those grants are eligible only for projects reducing risks in communities facing multiple environmental harms. Additionally, his characterization of the grants as large sums of cash also is untrue. They are capped at $50,000 (and many were less than $10,000) and are allocated as reimbursements for actually accrued expenses for the proposed project detailed in their application. Also, his claim that projects serving poor white communities would be excluded from the grant program is untrue—like all other agency EJ grant programs, it allocates funds to organizations improving environmental conditions in racial minority and/or low- income communities. Dan’s comments frame racial inequalities as a thing of the past and communities of color as undeserving, and thus race- conscious government EJ programs as unjust and violating the organization’s commitment to neutrality. He regularly tried to shape the EJ program to accord with his beliefs. However, to do so, as we saw earlier, he used a seemingly innocuous, objective, and indisputable argument: that agencies are prohibited by law from basing decisions on race. Dan’s discourse matters. He worked in his agency’s EJ grant program for several years and thus was likely regarded by coworkers unfamiliar with EJ as a reasonable spokesperson about what EJ requires. Accordingly, his discursive efforts to restrict his agency’s EJ efforts— to strip them of attention to race— likely influenced colleagues’ understandings of which agency EJ efforts are reasonable. While he is the only EJ staff person I met who expressed such EQB packet page - 91 “We Do Ecology, Not Sociology” 101

views, whites commonly employ such narratives to delegitimize policies and programs that would extend government resources to communities of color long excluded from them. The pushback Rose described and Dan stridently wields reflect clas- sist and racist prejudice that are widespread in U.S. society. Dan’s account evokes the racist and sexist narrative that poor black women are lazy “welfare queens” who refrain from working to live on government largess, which conservatives widely use to delegitimize welfare programs and other government assistance to the poor. People also use these narratives to disparage community activists fighting for stronger environmental protections. For example, one news article (Milman 2017) described EJ activists’ fight against a landfill that polluted local drinking water: “What followed was a 10- year legal battle that finally forced the authorities to address the pollution and connect households to a clean water supply. ‘Even then, some of the white people in the town said we were just some n*****s looking for money,’ a resident who fought against the landfill said.”1 On another occasion, I observed staff use such narratives in ways that delegitimized potential EJ reforms and other government assistance for working- class communities. I was invited to a quarterly meeting of about twenty- five county- level public health and environment officials to tell them about my research project and ask for their comments. Although the group does not regularly discuss “environmental justice” per se, the person who invited me felt that the group members do work that is highly relevant to environmental inequalities and thus that they would be interested in learning about my research. After introducing them to environmental inequalities and basic EJ principles, I asked what they thought agencies’ EJ efforts should entail. As in my one- on- one interviews with staff, this group’s responses were varied, and they insisted that agencies’ abilities to address environmental inequalities are constrained by regulatory authority and dwindling resources. Yet some also scoffed at the idea of providing extra state resources to low- income communities— and low- income Native American and immigrant communities in particular—by asserting that community members would squander those investments. To illustrate, here is an excerpt of the discussion as I recorded it in my fieldnotes:

Person A [white man]: “Low- income populations seem to make the worst choices.” They don’t make much money, but then they buy “cigarettes and booze. Inappropriate choices!” EQB packet page - 92 102 Chapter 4

Person B [white man]: We should get “the WIC ladies” to give you a presentation. “It is a ridiculous waste of money we are throwing at food stamps. They’re buying frozen dinners!” Person C [white woman]: “Ice cream!!” Person B: “They can buy all that stuff now. To me, that’s an injustice. Our government programs are creating the problem.” Person A: He ranted about “program abuse”— “alcohol abuse” among Native Americans, “who learn that the more kids you have, the more money they can get from the government and that it’s easier to get a check from the government than get a job.” The system is “easy to abuse.”

All of these individuals have leadership roles in county public health agencies and thus decide whether their subordinates take inequalities seriously. Because their organizations have not been formally tasked with developing EJ reforms and programs that provide extra assistance to working class and racially marginalized communities, the extent to which they do so will be limited by these officials’ racist discursive work that cast those communities’ residents as irresponsible.

Dismissing Concerns about Environmental Inequalities

Some bureaucrats challenge EJ proposals by dismissing concerns about environmental inequalities. Anne told me that, in the EJ meetings attended by representatives from the various departments, “We spent months just trying to convince some folks that inequity existed and was real.” Scott, an EJ staff person at a different agency, said that his colleagues express a lot of “skepticism that this is an issue at all.” Jamie noted that, when he first started working on his agency’s EJ efforts, managers would belittle EJ concerns: “I remember very vividly people saying that environmental equity, and then it became environmental justice, was not a real issue. That there was no way that in our country that these types of things could actually be happening. That these folks were exaggerating the impacts that were happening inside their communities.” Although Jamie stated that this is less common today, many EJ staff in his organization and others told me that some colleagues still reject proposed EJ reforms by downplaying the severity of environmental inequalities. Nicky, an EJ staff person who recently worked with Jamie, told me that other staff used this narrative to reject her proposed EJ reforms. “One of the first things that I did when I got there was I had all these meetings [about EJ]. And you just heard this complete resistance: ‘Why do we have EQB packet page - 93 “We Do Ecology, Not Sociology” 103

to do that? Things are so different. The world is better.’” Tom, also an EJ staff person, told me in our interview that this claim “comes up a lot: ‘We are improving things for everyone.’ I have to have this argument all of the time.” The problem with his colleagues’ arguments is that they ignore and diminish the highly unequal distribution of environmental hazards. Although not necessarily intending to undermine EJ proposals, such claims effectively do by framing them as unnecessary. Common sayings within environmental regulatory agencies, even when not made about EJ reforms per se, do similar work. Notably, in my own interactions with environmental regulatory agency staff, they regularly invoke their agency’s mission statement, asserting “We protect public health and the environment.” They do so in ways that imply both aspiration (this is what we aim to accomplish) and fact (this is what we do accomplish). Consistently restating this establishes that existing organizational practice is effective and forecloses conversation about ways it could be improved. Linda, an EJ staff person, told me that coworkers rejected EJ reform proposals by explicitly asserting that agency rules effectively protect public health and the environment. For example, they argue that, as long as industry actors are meeting their permit requirements, the agency is protecting all people. Her colleague Sara emphasized this same point. For example, she described how Tim, the manager who volunteered to help steer the agency’s EJ efforts, used this argument to disparage proposed EJ policy as unnecessary. In one case, Tim was livid about the agency’s new public participation policy that adds requirements over and above the agency’s (rather vague) EJ policy:

He was furious about it. … He said, “We have staff who spend thousands of hours putting together a community meeting where no community shows up. Is that because of a lack of methodology on our part or strategy on our part? No. (voice rises) That’s because the community trusts us to do our job.” … To say that that means we are doing a great job and people trust us I think is a little bit of a jump. He was really enraged about this [public participation] policy! [He said,] “This is exactly why I hate this stuff. I thought we agreed on this comprehensive [EJ] policy. I read it, and the reason I signed on to it is because you were leaving flexibility, and there was going to be a guidance document, but it wasn’t going to be heavy- handed and tell us what we have to do.”

Tim’s claim that the agency effectively does its job casts proposed public engagement rules as unnecessary. Tim corroborated this in an email to me, rejecting the new EJ rules by asserting that current regulations are sufficient: “We know (and believe) that our regulatory programs, when properly EQB packet page - 94 104 Chapter 4

complied with, will protect people and the environment.” In an interview with me, Tim characterized community engagement as a waste of time and proposed EJ reforms as “zealous,” “impractical,” “unrealistic,” and “unnecessary.” He told me that he consistently says these things in the agency’s EJ group meetings that he volunteered to participate in. His colleagues have told me that he vocally contests their proposals, that he vows to fight any EJ proposals that are not optional, that he will ignore the recommended EJ practices himself, and that he will support other staff who ignore them. Tim’s claims matter: he was often the highest- ranking person in the agency- wide EJ group, thus functioning as a de facto gatekeeper. Other committee members may have felt persuaded to defer to his opinion, and he can instruct his own staff to not implement proposed EJ reforms. Indeed, the agency’s EJ policy is still only a set of voluntary guidances. Sara explained: “We intentionally had to make the policy broad and flexible to get it passed. It was the only way it was going to happen.” Yet this flexibility also means that staff can ignore the policy’s recommendations. My interview with Lucy, a senior manager and attorney, provided another example of high- level staff using this narrative to delegitimize and neuter their agencies’ EJ efforts. Lucy asserted confidently, “We do not need a statute directing us to protect environmental justice or to advance environmental justice, because protecting human health applies to everybody.” She asserted repeatedly that communities’ concerns about toxic hot spots are “usually” unwarranted. To make this case, she used a hypothetical scenario of a facility that, to comply with regulations, must keep its air emissions below “seven” units (e.g., parts per billion): “Seven is probably the right number in real life, because we protect human health. … But how can we help the community feel safer? By letting them know what’s out there. They may see that there is actually a problem, or [voice rises] they may see it’s actually okay! That the facility can be trusted. They actually are usually at five, or four!, which is usually the case. … So then they’ll see that things are actually okay.” Lucy asserts that regulatory standards are properly set to protect public health and thus that proposed EJ reforms that would increase restrictions on hazardous activities in overburdened communities are unnecessary, despite extensive evidence of human exposure to harmful levels of environmental chemicals (Morello- Frosch et al. 2011; WHO 2016b) and critiques of existing environmental regulatory standards (Blais and Wagner 2008; Brown 2007; Cordner 2015; Vogel 2012). EQB packet page - 95 “We Do Ecology, Not Sociology” 105

Additionally, although she acknowledges that monitoring could show that the facility’s emissions exceed a regulatory standard, she insists that this is unlikely— despite evidence that facilities often violate regulatory standards (EPA 2016e). She exuberantly elaborated that the “real problem” is that residents and industry don’t “trust each other” and just need to talk: “The businesses are as afraid of the communities as the communities are afraid of them. We can see you guys just want the same thing! Can you just talk to each other? … [Gleefully] Communicate communicate communicate communicate! It’s the answer to so many things! … Those kinds of good neighbor principles [are] what we are strongly encouraging facilities to adopt. … Let’s get to the problem where it actually is.” Claiming that residents and industry simply need to communicate erases environmental inequalities, and she used these framings to dismiss EJ staff members’ and EJ advocates’ calls for stronger regulations in overburdened communities. Through these rhetorical practices, Lucy defines increased public outreach as the only legitimate EJ reform to regulatory practice and all other proposed EJ reforms as unwarranted. She referenced an agency EJ document advocating more communication between permitted facilities and concerned community members, stating, “That’s what I talk from. That’s where my passion is. I really don’t think law is the answer.” In contrast, EJ staff and advocates view increased public participation as an initial step in EJ policy implementation, but that meaningfully doing EJ requires the agency to promulgate stronger regulations and impose stronger permit conditions on facilities in overburdened areas. Lucy related that she voluntarily joined the agency’s EJ efforts and that she regularly makes these arguments. EJ efforts are vulnerable to such manipulation, because EJ staff accept the participation of anyone interested to maximize staff involvement in under-resourced EJ efforts. Given her powerful position, Lucy can authorize or terminate EJ programs in ways that EJ staff cannot. Indeed, EJ staff in her agency who had been developing protocol for integrating EJ into permitting related to me that her office undermined their efforts, eliminating their recommended reforms that would have imposed stronger permit conditions on facilities in overburdened communities and insisting that the reforms be limited to “best practice” public participation suggestions for regulated entities. My interview with Gary, a senior manager at a state agency, reveals how bureaucrats appeal to scientific certainty to frame current regulatory practice as effective, dismiss community members’ concerns about the EQB packet page - 96 106 Chapter 4

environmental hazards posed by facilities, and cast proposed EJ reforms as unnecessary. I asked him what he thought his agency could do to support EJ, in light of its regulatory constraints. Gary replied that EJ and other community organizations are wrong to be concerned about the safety of industrial facilities in their state. He claimed that, in terms of air pollution in his state, “the real issues” are from mobile sources, which are regulated not by his agency but by federal agencies, and that the stationary sources his agency regulates do not pose risks to public health:

It doesn’t matter what we do [in] permitting—we can ratchet stuff down to the lowest level in the world, but you still have that existing situation [of air pollution from mobile sources]. … You have to be out there identifying what the real issues are. … A lot of this is really from something totally other than the facility we’re talking about. What they’re doing, we model it, we’ll do all these other things, and find out that it’s not causing a problem. … They are well controlled. … It gets back to, again, good information. Information that’s not based on what we think, but information that’s based on science. … It’s like people don’t believe science. Science is not going to change their emotion on how they feel about something.

He reinforced his argument that residents are driven by “emotions” rather than “science” and are concerned about facilities that seem scary but are actually harmless by relating the following hypothetical case: “You’re a coffee maker [roaster]. Well, it smells. Maybe at first it smelled okay. But if you smell it every day, every hour of the day, it gets to be a little tiring. But there’s nothing in that smell that’s going to harm you.” Gary’s argument is persuasive in large part because he insists that the regulatory science definitively shows that facilities’ emissions are below levels of scientific concern. Indeed, bureaucrats commonly defend their data as comprehensive and their methods as fully capable of identifying the “true” extent of pollution. Yet, these claims about scientific certainty are unfounded in many ways. Regulatory standards are often not met, and evidence that regions are generally in compliance with standards like the National Ambient Air Quality Standards obscures the fact that smaller areas within them are out of compliance. Additionally, agencies conduct relatively little monitoring for most pollutants. Regulatory benchmarks (“safe” concentrations of chemicals in air, water, or food) do not exist for many chemicals and scenarios. Moreover, regulatory benchmarks are constructed on incomplete data: for any given pollutant, toxicological research has been conducted on only a small subset of possible health effects; innu- merable assumptions are made about how to translate those findings to EQB packet page - 97 “We Do Ecology, Not Sociology” 107

the wide array of human bodies and lifestyles; and those studies examine singular chemicals rather than the mixtures to which humans are actually exposed. Ignoring the limitations of existing regulatory science, Gary definitively asserts that the agency effectively controls facilities’ hazards and thus that community members concerned about them are misinformed. Gary’s emphatic claims matter: as a leading manager at his agency, he has the authority to decide how his office will define and integrate EJ principles into its work. He noted several times that he insists on these arguments to the agency’s EJ staff, refusing to implement their suggested EJ reforms. Other scholars have also documented state actors discursively creating scientific certainty where it does not exist to dismiss calls for stronger environmental regulations. For example, in her study of conflict over hazardous facilities along the Mississippi River in Louisiana, Barbara Allen (2004, 64, 135– 137) shows that the state’s governor and state regulatory officials responded to working- class, racially marginalized residents’ concerns about pollution from petrochemical facilities by asserting that environmental regulation is effective, and that the problem is that people are poor and lead unhealthy lifestyles (e.g., drinking, smoking, poor diets). These framings push responsibility for residents’ illnesses onto residents themselves and declare that environmental inequalities do not exist.2 In some cases, staff diminish concerns about environmental inequality by asserting that racism is a thing of the past and thus race- conscious EJ reforms are unnecessary. For example, Brian, an EJ staff person, told me that, in meetings and hallway conversations, some of his white colleagues disparage his EJ reform efforts:

The bureaucrats say, “Oh, and EJ’s important now again. … Here we go again.” … We have so many of these people who’ve been around here for years. … Layer after layer of people who are just gatekeepers and do not think that racism exists [or that the] color of your skin has anything to do with anything, that that’s all back in the ’60s, [that] we shouldn’t be worried about that stuff, and you should speak English. Not in leadership, but in the ranks, and the ranks control a lot of stuff. They call themselves the “we- bes”: “We be here before you; we be here after you.” … They say, “We’ll wait out this administration. We’ll wait out the legislators. Let’s just wait them out. They’re going to be turned out in a year. We’ll just punt it.”

Such assertions trivialize EJ reforms as a recurring fad, and also as obsolete because racism is no longer salient. All of these accounts convey that EJ- supportive staff have to spend precious time debating the existence of racial EQB packet page - 98 108 Chapter 4

inequality, which stymies their progress on EJ reforms. Furthermore, Brian’s account depicts staff proudly declaring they will refuse to implement EJ reforms to regulatory practice and implies that such behavior is acceptable and longstanding. Such post- racial narratives reflect dominant racial discourse in U.S. society, which casts racial inequality as something of the past and thus delegitimizes calls for race-conscious government policy (Omi and Winant 2015). In other cases, staff dismiss the severity of environmental inequalities by using racist stereotypes that attribute health inequalities to cultural behavioral choices and erase their connection to environmental inequalities. For example, an EJ advocate told me about a public meeting in which a state government agency representative pushed back against the activists’ calls for stronger regulation of local environmental hazards by using racist stereotypes that blame residents of color for their own health problems. She recounted: “We actually had a health official stand up and say that a lot of the reason communities were having these impacts was personal choices. He talked about the ‘gumbo factor’ and the ‘chile factor’: black people eat too much gumbo, which is bad for your health, and Latinos eat too many ‘chiles,’ which are bad for your health.” These racist stereotypes cast health inequalities as a function of unhealthy cultural norms, making residents— not polluters clustered in their communities—responsible for their own illnesses. In turn, it casts EJ reforms to environmental regulatory practice as unwarranted. This particular narrative is especially effective in the “post- racial” context, given that its stereotypes appear innocuously friendly rather than fueled by racial animus.

“We Already Do EJ”

Some staff verbally reject proposed EJ reforms by asserting that existing regulatory practice is already consistent with EJ principles. For instance, in a long discussion about the various ways her colleagues disparage proposed EJ reforms, Sara told me that one of the most common claims she faces from EJ- resistant colleagues is that they say, in regard to various EJ proposals, “We don’t need to do any more, because we already do it.” I observed staff use this narrative to reject proposed EJ reforms. For example, Paula asserted in our interview that EJ analysis “is almost an inherent consideration anyway.” During the staff EJ training, I observed Bob use this EQB packet page - 99 “We Do Ecology, Not Sociology” 109

narrative to vocally dismiss all but the most limited EJ reforms. After we watched and discussed the EJ training video, the facilitator asked the group to suggest how they could apply the video’s lessons to their own work. Imme- diately, Bob, the senior manager in the room, asserted, “We already do it,” explaining that they meet with regulated actors at their business site rather than requiring them to travel to the agency’s main office and that they hire bilingual interpreters when meeting with regulated actors who are not native English speakers. Bob’s assertion indicates to his staff that they can ignore the training because it does not apply to them. The EJ staff person asked for others’ suggestions. None disputed Bob’s point, and most reiterated it. For example, Bill asserted, “We are an organization that already does this work. We just need to acknowledge our successes.” One person noted that he sometimes allows Spanish-speaking people to use an interpreter to take a necessary test required for compliance with a particular regulation—implying that doing so only sometimes is consistent with EJ principles and thus adequate. Another concluded that others’ responses indicate that he does not need to develop additional ways to support EJ: “I guess I do it, because we do it.” Claiming that “we already do EJ” is problematic in part because agencies rarely perform the practices EJ staff advocate— such as taking community members’ input seriously, conducting EJ analysis for every proposed permit application and new regulation, and ensuring regulatory decisions do not exacerbate environmental inequality. Additionally, this narrative forecloses discussion about new ways staff could support EJ. These discursive techniques— narrowly defining what EJ requires and proclaiming that staff already do these practices— are especially effective when wielded by managers, who use their authority within the agency to tell their subordinates which EJ proposals (if any) they need to implement. Staff also claim that the agency already contributes to environmentally just outcomes. For example, Nicky described how her coworkers assert that their hazardous site cleanup work inherently meets EJ principles and thus that going “one step further” (e.g., doing EJ analysis of various cleanup options) is unnecessary: “When you talk about EJ, they also argue that … because most of the contaminated sites are located in low-income communities or communities of color, you are practicing and advocating for EJ. So, there is no need to go one step further.” Rulewriting staff similarly reject her proposal that they do EJ analysis to determine how a new rule or rule revision would affect environmental inequalities. They say, “Who has the EQB packet page - 100 110 Chapter 4

worst air quality? So if I am changing my regs [regulations] for particulate matter, … then I am working for environmental justice. … My work already incorporates environmental justice by its pure nature. … We are protecting everybody. And by protecting everybody, we are protecting the most vulnerable.” This framing obscures the fact that, although these agencies have reduced some environmental hazards, many others remain unregulated, environmental inequalities and associated health disparities persist, and agencies could be doing more to reduce them. Furthermore, the claim that environmental regulations necessarily benefit the most- burdened communities is refuted by evidence that regulations can unintentionally increase environmental inequalities. For example, regulatory innovations fostering urban greening efforts such as the development of bike paths and green spaces often lead to gentrification: fuel- ing housing prices and otherwise reinforcing environmental privileges for elites at the expense of other residents (Gould and Lewis 2017). As another example, scholars have shown that California’s carbon cap- and- trade system designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions will worsen emissions disparities by race and ethnicity (London et al. 2013; Pastor et al. 2013).

“Our Hands Are Tied”: The Standard Narrative as Resistance to EJ Reforms

Some EJ- supportive staff noted that coworkers invoke limited regulatory authority and resources in ways that prematurely end discussion about proposed EJ reforms. For example, after Sara lamented coworkers’ “outright resistance” to proposed EJ reforms, I asked what forms that resistance takes. She responded: “Just the number of times that people just say, ‘Well, we don’t have regulatory authority to do that.’ That’s the end of the conversation. That’s it. ‘That would require regulatory change.’ Period. So that just stops everything in its tracks. … People do this a lot. ‘We really want to help, but our hands are tied.’” [She puts an apologetic look on her face and holds her hands out as if they were tied together.] She elaborated that, when managers and agency leaders make this claim, it ends the conversation regardless of whether the claim has merit. They do not suggest revisiting their interpretation of regulatory authority or proposing regulatory or legislative reforms to expand their authority. Rather, they cast existing interpretations of authority as uncontestable and proposed EJ reforms as impossible. EQB packet page - 101 “We Do Ecology, Not Sociology” 111

Nicky asserted that her coworkers use claims about limited resources to justify their lack of participation in proposed EJ reform activities but then privately reveal that their objection to EJ stems from other factors. “Behind closed doors, they can talk to their buddies and be like, ‘This is bullshit. I’m not doing this EJ stuff.’ But of course to their managers they are like, ‘Hey, I’m busy. I’m doing my work. Who has time for this?’” Ryan said that, when his colleagues say they do not have the data necessary to do an EJ analysis, “sometimes it is an excuse.” In chapter 6, I discuss what else may be motivating staff to reject EJ reforms. Certainly, resources and regulatory authority pose limits on what staff can do. That said, what Sara, Nicky, Ryan, and other EJ- supportive staff convey is that they feel that colleagues often use the standard narrative in ways that end discussion about EJ reforms before that silencing is war- ranted. Such discursive work marks proposed EJ reforms as undoable and discourages staff from creatively deliberating how to support environmental justice within existing constraints.

Body Language

Some bureaucrats silently challenge the legitimacy of EJ staff and the reforms they propose through their body language in meetings. Linda noted that middle managers at her agency “do a lot of eye rolling at meetings” about EJ, effectively signaling to other meeting participants their disregard for proposed EJ reforms. Tanya commented that staff in some of her agency’s offices respond to EJ discussion with “‘Ugh.’ [Rolls her eyes, with a grimace.] … People rolling their eyes.” Peter said some senior- level managers “would look at me with a look of disgust when I would bring up EJ issues.” At internal agency EJ meetings, I observed body language that sent similar signals. For example, in the EJ training in which the manager, Bob, protested content that he found “unscientific,” my fieldnotes reveal how other participants physically displayed disrespect for the training: “Attention was really wavering throughout and the group seemed only moderately engaged— lots of yawning, staring off into space, one person fell asleep, and two stepped out of the room briefly.” Additionally, at an EJ planning meeting of three EJ staff and about a dozen of their coworkers, I noted that one of the coworkers “sat at the corner and typed on her cell phone the entire time, holding it up in front of her face, not trying to hide it at all,” and that EQB packet page - 102 112 Chapter 4

“many folks sat back, using their cell phones as if they weren’t really in the conversation.”

Staff Strategies for Managing Colleagues’ Narratives That Undermine EJ

EJ staff and their EJ- supportive colleagues engage in various practices that challenge these narratives and legitimize EJ reforms to regulatory practice. First, to disrupt coworkers’ characterizations of environmental inequalities as insignificant, EJ staff and their EJ- supportive colleagues use EJ mapping tools and statistics in staff trainings to illustrate the scope of environmental inequalities. For example, frustrated with coworkers claiming that environmental inequalities are not serious, Nicky recalled to me that she got the staff revising a particular regulation to create EJ maps plotting the facilities regulated by this rule and the demographic composition of the surrounding communities: “They found out that certain facilities were 50 percent more likely to be in Latino neighborhoods. … It walked the conversation back to a space of data, and we were able to have a conversation about the fact that these facilities are disproportionately sited, and therefore impact- ing at higher amounts, Latino populations. … The whole point of that was, I don’t want you to tell me that disparities or disproportionality doesn’t exist.” By showing the disproportionate concentration of hazards in communities of color, the maps silenced coworkers’ discursive pushback—and allowed her to move forward with more constructive conversations about how (rather than whether) to write rules that reduce racial environmental inequalities. Anne similarly hailed EJ maps for getting colleagues—especially those who identify as scientists—to acknowledge the existence of environmental inequalities: “Because I’m a statistician, I always fall back to the data and the evidence. And I just feel like if I beat you over the head with the evidence enough times, eventually you are going to go [and agree that environmental inequalities deserve regulatory attention]. And that’s the good thing about them being scientists, because they can also recognize that you know [what the data indicate].” Several of Anne’s colleagues told me that her map presentations transformed their thinking. Jane noted that it helped her see the value of increased enforcement efforts in overburdened communities. “That opened my eyes and helped me see things somewhat differently. That it wasn’t just somebody trying to say that I wasn’t doing EQB packet page - 103 “We Do Ecology, Not Sociology” 113

my job good enough. … I remember coming out of that [thinking] that one practical solution would be that we could try harder to target inspections in those areas.” EJ maps can help staff witness the uneven landscape of cumulative impacts and consider how their own work relates to it. As such, these maps function similarly to the engineering drawings and other “workplace artifacts” that Beth Bechky (2003) shows can help solve problems across professional boundaries within organizations. That said, Nicky also explained that some coworkers’ resistance to the race- conscious nature of EJ analysis was so strident that she felt she had to take race out of the conversation entirely in order to get them to discuss environmental inequality. “In every agency” she worked at as an EJ staff person, “I got so much pushback on race, that I felt like the fight for me is really about reducing pollution and improving people’s health. I was able to step back from the argument of, ‘I want you to say race with me,’ because I was able to say, … ‘We are going to target refineries that are the most polluting.’ Once we got to that, I knew we were going to end up where I wanted to end up when I was talking about race. So I focused on the solution and the outcome more than what we’re calling it.” She managed colleagues’ resistance to explicitly discussing racial inequalities by focusing on the most environmentally burdened communities. Yet, doing so obscures the fact that racism, poverty, and other demographic factors increase some communities’ vulnerabilities to harm from exposure to environmental hazards. Second, to combat colleagues’ disparagements of community input, some EJ- supportive staff advise members of the public how to give input that is likely to influence regulatory decisions. Some EJ staff have organized training sessions about the public input processes for permits and rules, suggesting ways to craft effective input. Some also advise concerned community members about how to collect their own data to share with the agencies (i.e., keeping a journal of alarms or flares at the local oil refinery). Third, to bolster support for EJ among their colleagues, many EJ- supportive staff tell “success stories” about particularly transformative EJ projects their agency has helped foster. They do so at agency meetings, in interviews with researchers and journalists, in blog posts, in their own publications, and in official agency reports. Certain stories are retold quite frequently. Perhaps the most widely recounted is the case of ReGenesis in Spartanburg, South Carolina, which recruited over $3 million in government grants and other investments and cleaned up a hazardous waste site, EQB packet page - 104 114 Chapter 4

constructed health clinics, trained and employed local residents, attracted businesses, built affordable housing and sports facilities, rerouted a major roadway to integrate neighborhoods that had been previously divided, and more (EPA 2009b; Fields 2014; Lee 2005). Staff telling this story foreground that the project produced this extraordinary array of outcomes, started with a $25,000 U.S. EPA EJ Small Grant, and was led by Harold Mitchell, a char- ismatic individual with a friendly disposition. The message is clear: EJ is a positive, productive, win- win endeavor. One former EPA EJ staff person, Jim, explained that the agency tells Mitchell’s story so frequently because Mitchell “demonstrated the serious- ness of it without upsetting the people as agitators. He doesn’t threaten.” While Mitchell’s “non- threatening” approach makes his story compelling, his circumstances were not as representative of other environmental justice cases as is often implied. Many overburdened and vulnerable communities struggle to reduce the impacts of industries that are still operating and highly resistant to reducing their hazardous practices, and to get agencies to clean up contamination that is very difficult and expensive to remediate. The process of achieving environmental justice will, more often than not, be highly contentious, because not all actors will win. Thus, generalizing from one particularly positive case obscures the structural constraints that prevent those good outcomes from happening more often. Jamie, an EJ staff person, acknowledged these limitations while explaining why he nevertheless continues to showcase Spartanburg and other inspiring examples of change in overburdened and vulnerable communities:

For years, we [staff advocating for EJ reforms] battled with them [other staff]. And then we said well, wait a minute. Instead of continuing to try and push them and they’re not doing it, what we’ll do is we’ll go around the process. We’ll show folks what real engagement looks like, and the benefits that come out of doing engagement. … By no means do I think that Harold [Mitchell] is a model that works everywhere all the time. … Everybody is not going to always be a good neighbor. And every project is not going to be successful. But I think we can get enough that we can start to show positive movement. … Let’s get some wins so that other people want to jump in and be a part of the process. … Some people naturally want to be a part of it. Other people want to see that it’s safe to get in.

Although these “success stories” do not reflect most communities’ experiences fighting for environmental justice, staff advocating for EJ reforms use them as one strategy for deflecting coworkers’ narratives that disparage EJ EQB packet page - 105 “We Do Ecology, Not Sociology” 115

reforms. They assert that these stories inspire colleagues to view EJ as productive, in turn building support for EJ reforms among staff. Fourth, and most broadly, EJ- supportive staff frame EJ as central to, rather than inconsistent with, the agency’s identity. For example, Mus- tafa Ali helped lead U.S. EPA’s EJ efforts until early 2017, when he publicly resigned in protest of the incoming Trump administration. In the press cov- erage about his resignation, Ali defined the agency’s mission precisely in terms of EJ: “If you are at the EPA, remember that your job is about protecting the health and the environment of folks. … [S]tay focused on the most vulnerable communities and making sure that we are doing everything in our power to help improve their lives and to stand up against injustice in whatever form or fashion that may present itself. When we raised our right hand, that oath that we took was to make sure that we were doing those things” (Paris et al. 2017, 75).3 Others implicitly frame EJ reforms as part of agency identity by making justice a regular part of work discussions. For instance, Anne noted that, a few years ago in a meeting, “I said, ‘I am just making a public commitment that I will not go to a meeting— I do not care what it’s about— without bringing up issues of justice. I am going to do that.’ And I do. And people are like [lowers her voice to a whisper], ‘Here she comes!’ But I don’t care. I don’t care if it’s a budget meeting. I don’t care if we are talking about com- puters. I don’t care what we are talking about. We have to keep it front of mind, top of mind. Otherwise it does not happen.” Others do so by challenging coworkers’ characterizations of what it means for their organization to be neutral or impartial. For example, I attended a meeting in which staff debated doing more stringent permit review for facilities in vulnerable and overburdened communities. After Tim rejected this proposed EJ reform by repeatedly insisting that the agency needs to “maintain a level playing field” for industry, several staff advocating for EJ reforms pushed back against him by recasting EJ reforms as crucial for, rather than contradicting, neutrality and fairness. For instance, Jennifer retorted, “There hasn’t been a level playing field [for communities], which is where EJ comes in to play.” EQB packet page - 106 116 Chapter 4

Conclusion

EJ staff and their colleagues who support them describe working in an environment in which they struggle against not only external challenges but also internal resistance from coworkers. Staff frame EJ reforms as conflicting with the agency’s identity in various ways. Much of this pushback invokes colorblind racial ideology pervasive in U.S. society, casting the race-conscious nature of EJ reforms as violating bureaucrats’ requirements to be impartial. Staff also dismiss EJ reforms by disparaging working- class and racially marginalized communities as undeserving of government assistance, minimizing environmental inequalities, claiming agencies’ decision- making processes already align with EJ principles, and insisting that limited resources and regulatory authority preclude discussion about proposed EJ reforms. EJ staff described this discursive pushback as a regular part of their jobs, and they rarely mentioned instances of management stepping in to censor such narratives. My own observations of staff substantiate their claims, as I observed coworkers use one or more of these narratives in every meeting I attended and every interview I conducted. These narratives constitute part of the structures of oppression that produce environmental injustice. EJ staff typically characterized these narratives as directed toward EJ principles in general, though sometimes they noted specific EJ proposals that their colleagues resisted. Most conversation about EJ in these agencies still focuses on public participation. Thus, considerable staff pushback per- tains to what are, by all measures, relatively basic, low-stakes EJ reforms— the ones that require few or no concessions from industry. Tom, a long- time EJ staff person, made this point when he said to me that there is “a lot of resistance” to EJ among staff, and “There is a conversation going on, articu- lating ‘What is EJ?’ … It just focuses on public participation. We don’t even talk about what ‘fair treatment’ means.” That is, staff pushback is not even largely levied against more robust possible EJ reforms that would directly reduce material environmental inequalities. To be sure, EJ staff also emphasize that not all of their colleagues engage in these practices, that many express concern about EJ issues, and that some are very supportive of EJ reforms. Rather than generalize about all staff, EJ staff emphasized that some colleagues cast EJ reforms as discordant with regulatory practice and derail the efforts of EJ staff. While I honor that, I want to emphasize that many of the narratives staff use to disparage EJ EQB packet page - 107 “We Do Ecology, Not Sociology” 117

reforms are institutionalized— so widespread and taken for granted in these agencies and in U.S. society that anyone can invoke them, and that in doing so they undermine proposed EJ reforms. Such is the case with the insistence that government agencies “be colorblind” and associated dominant interpretations of bureaucratic neutrality, which staff often invoke to defend existing regulatory practice and preclude conversation about how to reform regulatory practice to reduce environmental inequalities. EJ staff and their EJ- supportive coworkers use various strategies for confronting and defusing these narratives. They use EJ maps and other devices to show that racial environmental inequalities are real and significant, advise community members how to give persuasive input into regulatory decisions, tell stories about inspiring cases of transformative improvements in overburdened and vulnerable communities, and frame EJ as consistent with the agency’s identity and mission. These findings suggest that we need to think critically about the standard narrative about the factors that shape and constrain agencies’ EJ efforts— to consider what it obscures. Agencies’ EJ efforts are hindered by factors outside the control of agency staff: limited resources, political economic pressure, unclear legal authority, and underdeveloped analytical tools. Yet this chapter shows that staff themselves also play a role in the slow pace of agencies’ EJ efforts. EJ staff work in an environment in which coworkers can and do discursively challenge and delegitimize proposed EJ reforms, in turn effectively stymying them. As I show in the next chapter, bureaucrats resist proposed EJ reforms in other ways as well. EQB packet page - 108

Notes

Preface

1. Save EPA and the Environmental Protection Network are two organizations comprised largely of former U.S. EPA staff working to defend the agency from hostile attacks by the Trump administration (EPN 2017; Save EPA 2017).

2. Among other things, I have assisted the Environmental Data & Governance Ini- tiative (EDGI), a collection of academics and nonprofits addressing potential and real threats to science and federal environmental and energy policy (EDGI 2018). EDGI leads federal environmental data-archiving events and monitors and documents changes to federal agencies. My role in EDGI has been relatively minor; I interviewed some former U.S. EPA staff for EDGI and contributed to some EDGI reports and publications (Dillon et al. 2018; Fredrickson et al. 2018; Sellers et al. 2017).

Chapter 1

1. While the preponderance of evidence indicates that environmental hazards tend to be clustered in low- income communities and communities of color, some studies have found otherwise. When noting this variation, scholars reviewing environmental inequality scholarship discuss how research design can obscure environmental inequalities along lines of race and class (Chakraborty, Maantay, and Brender 2011; Chakraborty 2018; Downey 2005; Shadbegian and Wolverton 2015).

2. Some scholars have argued for the need to bring nonhuman nature into our con- ceptualizations of EJ (e.g., Schlosberg 2007; Pellow 2018), and this is reflected in key EJ movement declarations as well (Principles 1991). I do not include these important issues here, as they have not been a core concern of the EJ advocacy around EJ policy implementation or of agencies’ EJ reform efforts, which together constitute the focus of this book.

3. Many environmental sociologists have employed constructionist analysis to explain the persistence of environmental problems and to showcase various actors’ EQB packet page - 109 248 Notes

efforts to bring about environmental change (Hannigan 2006). Constructionist analyses illuminate the intentional rhetorical strategies of political elites, industry actors, or social movement organizers to legitimize or delegitimize others’ environmental concerns, as well as everyday discursive practices through which people unintentionally reproduce environmental problems. Typically, constructionist approaches contextualize and critically evaluate competing narratives in light of other evidence and identify how they serve different actors’ interests.

Chapter 2

1. In the United States, the president can issue executive orders to direct the actions of federal agencies and officers. They have the full force of the law, provided they do not violate legislative statute or the Constitution.

2. See Holifield (2012) for a critical assessment of changes in this definition over time.

3. This is per California Senate Bill 535 (2012), passed in response to EJ advocates’ concerns that the cap- and- trade program authorized by California’s 2006 California Global Warming Solutions Act (Assembly Bill 32 [AB32]) would exacerbate environmental inequalities. For information on the EJ implications of AB32, see London et al. (2013) and Pastor et al. (2013). For information on California SB 535, see CalEPA (2017a, 2019).

4. The settlement required California’s Department of Pesticide Regulation to educate farmworkers about pesticide safety and to conduct air monitoring for pesticides— activities the department already does and that do not help those already exposed (CRPE n.d.).

5. I use italics here, as in other quotations from my interviews and observations, to indicate the speaker’s emphases.

6. Social movement scholars have observed that charitable foundations have “chan- neled” NGOs in conservative directions (McCarthy, Britt, and Wolfson 1991).

7. Brulle (2000) found that, whereas government grants constituted only 8.6 percent of funding for all environmental NGOs he surveyed, they constituted 24 percent of funding for EJ organizations (220, 252).

8. For similar cases of consensus-based process undermining EJ advocacy, see Kohl (2016), Ottinger (2013), Pellow (2000), and Pulido, Kohl, and Cotton (2016). See also Daley and Reams (2015), Foster (2002), and Lashley (2016) regarding why collaborations among community members, the state, and industry do not always work well in an EJ context. I return to these issues in chapter 7. EQB packet page - 110 Notes 249

Chapter 3

1. OEJ’s budget figures provided by EPA staff.

2. Administrative Procedures Act 5 USC section 706(2)(A).

3. For the rise of and problems with commensuration in environmental regulatory decision- making, see Espeland (1998) and Taylor (1984).

Chapter 4

1. I obscured the offensive word in this quote.

2. Scholars have long documented elites’ propensities to blame individuals for their own health problems and dismiss environmental and other structural contribu- tors to disease and suffering (e.g., Brown 2007; Guthman 2011; Levine 1982). Such claims are part of the broader neoliberal narrative that absolves the state and industry for such outcomes.

3. Mustafa Ali appears elsewhere in this book under a pseudonym.

Chapter 6

1. Scholars have shown that EJ activists widely challenge the epistemic authority of scientists (Allen 2003, 2004; Brown 2007; Collins and Evans 2002; Di Chiro 1998; Espeland 1998; Hannigan 2006; Harrison 2011; Hess 2007; Irwin 2001; Jasanoff 1990; Kinchy 2012; Kroll- Smith and Floyd 1997; Kurtz 2007; K. Moore 2008; Ottinger 2013; Tesh 2001; Wynne 1992).

2. Other environmental regulatory agencies’ mission statements track close to this. For example, for California EPA, “Our mission is to restore, protect and enhance the environment, to ensure public health, environmental quality and economic vitality” (CalEPA 2017b).

3. Please see the appendix for a few notes about this dataset and the methods used to analyze these data.

4. Egalitarian principles are not the only ideas of justice that EJ staff and other EJ advocates hold. I discuss egalitarianism here because it is a central principle of EJ activism and to illustrate how EJ advocates’ conceptions of justice differ from the utilitarianism underlying much environmental law and staff resistance to EJ reforms. EJ advocates’ complex conception of justice includes participatory parity and requires that government agencies combat group-based cultural oppression and its consequences (Harrison 2011, 2014; Schlosberg 2007; Walker 2012). EQB packet page - 111

FY20-21 Organizational Work Plan Update

Biennial focus: Support coordinated, effective, and meaningful action on climate mitigation and adaptation in Minnesota. §216H.02

EQB Strategies Key Projects Basis Deliverables Desired Long-term Outcomes Timeline/Decisions

1. The EQB fosters Develop the State §103B.151, State Water Plan Implementation of priority • Fall 2019: Scope overview  innovative policy Water Plan focused §103A.204, water management policies • Summer 2020: development on climate and §103A.43 and programs that reflect MN's Recommendations overview  promote changing climate • Fall 2020: Plan approval  implementation • Ongoing: Interagency coordination to advance recommendations

1. The EQB fosters Lead interagency M.L. 2019 Solar on Closed Implementation of policies that • Fall 2020: Approve final study  innovative policy study to expand SS Ch 4: Art. Landfills Report facilitate solar development • Ongoing: Support efforts to 1, Sec. 1, development solar installations across MN’s 114 closed landfill advance recommendations on closed landfill subd. 9b sites while maximizing energy sites generation, ecological benefits, and greenhouse gas mitigation

2. The EQB provides Lead interagency §116C.04 Interagency EAB Implementation of policies and • Fall 2019: Approve EAB Report leadership on priority study to advance subd. 2 Report programs to reduce  emerging environmental recommendations environmental, social, and • EAB Recommended Spring 2020: EAB Recommended issues and economic impacts of ash tree Actions Actions  implementation of loss • Ongoing: Interagency strategies to coordination to advance address emerald recommendations ash borer (EAB)

2. The EQB provides leadership [Emerging issues §116C.04 TBD Effective interagency response • TBD on priority emerging placeholder]* subd. 2 to emerging environmental environmental issues issues brought before the EQB

Updated: 02/04/2021 [original text; updates] Page 1 of 4 EQB packet page - 112 EQB Strategies Key Projects Basis Deliverables Desired Long-term Outcomes Timeline/Decisions

3. EQB’s environmental Consistently MR Outputs defined by Integrate climate analysis in the • Fall 2019: Convene ER review process is integrate climate 4410.0300 ER Subcommittee  ER program to support Implementation Subcommittee transparent, accountable, analysis into the informed decision-making for  1) Final report with (ERIS) efficient and creates a environmental the reduction of climate • recommendations 2020: Assemble Climate healthy environment and review (ER) impacts for integrating Technical Team and develop strong economy program climate into ER; draft recommendations  • 2021: Implement engagement 2) Changes to ER process, Board decision on program changes, begin any requirements implementation

3. EQB’s environmental Evaluate and MR Outputs defined by Analysis and disclosure of • Fall 2019: Convene ERIS review process is consider options to 4410.0300 ERIS human health information to • Next steps and timeline TBD transparent, accountable, understand and support informed decision- efficient and creates a address potential making healthy environment and health impacts strong economy through ER*

3. EQB’s environmental Create an ER Data MR 1) ER Data Continuous improvement of • 2020: Establish systematic data review process is Management Plan 4410.0300 Management ER program for transparency, management and reporting transparent, accountable, and update Annual Plan accountability, and efficiency procedures efficient and creates a ER Performance 2) Annual ER • Ongoing: Annual ER healthy environment and Report process Performance Performance Reports strong economy Report

3. EQB’s environmental Enhance public MR 1) ER Projects Minnesotans have access to • June 2021: Begin review process is access to ER 4410.0300 Interactive Map transparent, easy-to-use ER implementation transparent, accountable, project information 2) Updated EQB information to support efficient and creates a and documents Monitor and informed decision-making healthy environment and submission form strong economy 3) Searchable ER documents database

Updated: 02/04/2021 [original text; updates] Page 2 of 4 EQB packet page - 113 EQB Strategies Key Projects Basis Deliverables Desired Long-term Outcomes Timeline/Decisions

4. Minnesotans are Host the §116C.04 Environmental Minnesotans build shared • Winter 2019: Environmental engaged in policy Environmental subd. 7 Congress; ideas on understanding about MN Congress  conversations and Congress on MN climate actions climate actions and strategies • Environmental Congress for next diverse/underrepresented climate and strategies biennium under discussion groups are actively included and considered in policy development

4. Minnesotans are Facilitate Emerging 2018 EQB Youth voice at the Youth perspectives inform • 2019: Assemble EELs cohort to engaged in policy Environmental Resolution 2019 Environmental Minnesota’s environmental bring youth voice to the 2019 conversations and Leaders (EELs) Congress; 2020 vision, policy, programs, and Environmental Congress  diverse/underrepresented initiative Youth Voice board decision-making • Fall 2020: Host Youth Voice EQB groups are actively meeting  2021 meeting  Spring 2021: EELs included and considered Youth-led board cohort facilitates youth-focused in policy development meeting joint meeting with EQB and Climate Change Subcabinet

4. Minnesotans are Facilitate an §116C.04 Comprehensive Consistency and efficiency in • Winter 2019: Convene engaged in policy interagency subd. 4 interagency climate engaging Minnesotans, Interagency Team  Ongoing: conversations and engagement team E.O. 19-37 engagement plan especially underrepresented Support and co-lead diverse/underrepresented to coordinate a communities, across state engagement efforts and the groups are actively strategic approach government on climate action development of an engagement included and considered to statewide public policies and strategies framework for the Climate in policy development engagement on Change Subcabinet climate change

5. The EQB is a trusted Support E.O. 19-28 State Agency Increased awareness of the • Fall 2019, 2020: EQB approval of partner with state interagency Pollinator Reports status of pollinators and annual reports and civic agencies in the pollinator (2019 & 2020), implementation of policies and engagement plan  collaborative work of protection efforts, pollinator public programs to address stressors • 2021: Implement pollinator civic enhancing Minnesota’s and lead related engagement plan to pollinators engagement plan long-term environmental public • Fall 2021: Approve annual report quality engagement*

Updated: 02/04/2021 [original text; updates] Page 3 of 4 EQB packet page - 114 EQB Strategies Key Projects Basis Deliverables Desired Long-term Outcomes Timeline/Decisions

5. The EQB is a trusted Develop Section M.L. 2019 Report on funding Decision making on whether to • Winter 2020: Approve Final partner with state 404 Assumption SS Ch 4: Art. needs to secure assume Clean Water Act Report  Project extension agencies in the study* 1, Sec. 1, section 404 section 404 assumption under consideration collaborative work of subd. 9a assumption and enhancing Minnesota’s fully implement the long-term environmental state-assumed quality program

5. The EQB is a trusted partner Environment & §116C.04 2021 Energy & Public accountability via • Date TBD: EQB evaluate and with state agencies in the Energy Report Card subd. 2 Environment Report ongoing oversight over key approve updated metrics collaborative work of enhancing Minnesota’s long-term 2021 Card with updated environmental metrics and • Winter 2020: approve report  environmental quality metrics trends for MN 2021 assess project and present options to the Board

5. The EQB is a trusted partner with [Silica sand §116C.991 Technical assistance Informed decision-making on Ongoing: Respond to inquiries as state agencies in the collaborative work of enhancing Minnesota’s placeholder]* as requested by silica sand projects requested by local units of long-term environmental quality local governments government

6. Foster local Support GreenStep §116D.03 GreenStep annual Increased implementation of • Spring 2020: Status updates sustainability actions by Cities/Tribal subd. 2 status report to the high impact best practice • Continue support at the coordinating support to Nations work and Board actions for greenhouse gas strategic level; future staff local governments related initiatives mitigation consistent with support TBD; updates to the that advance local statewide goals, as well as Board TBD climate and other sustainability best sustainability practices action

6. Foster local Lead interagency §116C.04 Proposal for Accelerated progress on • Spring 2020: discuss proposal sustainability actions by team to inventory enhancing statewide climate and and recommended action steps coordinating support to enterprise-wide GreenStep Cities to sustainability goals through  Interagency conversations local governments efforts that support accelerate progress expanded state-local ongoing as part of the Climate local climate action on statewide collaboration Subcabinet Process consistent with climate and state goals sustainability goals

* These Key Projects are not climate focused, but are important EQB efforts in the 2020-21 biennium. Updated: 02/04/2021 [original text; updates] Page 4 of 4 EQB packet page - 115

Written Public Comment EQB packet page - 116

December 4, 2020

Formal written comment on the November 18th meeting of the Environmental Quality Board on the 2020 State Pollinator Report (edited from spoken public comment to include more detailed feedback)

Dear Environmental Quality Board members and Chair Commissioner Bishop,

Thank you for hearing my comment on Wednesday November 18th and reading my written comment. This comment includes information I shared at the public comment period as well as additional information for the public record.

My name is Julia Brokaw and I am a fourth year PhD Candidate in the Native Bee Lab at the University of Minnesota with a minor in Science, Technology and Environmental Policy from the Humphrey School. My comments today are on behalf of myself and not the Bee Lab or the university.

I want to take a moment to appreciate the work of Dr. Rebeca Gutierrez-Moreno who has incredible expertise in the field of pollinator ecology and integrated pest management. She has the difficult task of coordinating various efforts, stakeholders, and agency representatives. It is exciting to see this report come together this year.

Below are some of my comments on the report: Bee-Nesting Habitat:

First, I would have liked to see the report include more information and priorities for research on nesting habitat. I’ve mentioned this concern to the board before (in my verbal public comments to the board in May and in September 2020). My dissertation research focuses on wild bee nesting habitat, specifically of solitary ground-nesting bees, which make up over 70% of bee species in Minnesota and globally. As a research community, we know virtually nothing about nesting habitat for wild bees, even though they spend most of their lives in their nests (see in-depth reviews by Dr. Harmon-Threatt 2020, and Antoine and Forrest 2020). The way we currently conduct pollinator conservation is by investing time and resources in wildflower plantings (bee food sources), which is like designing a city center and only putting in restaurants and grocery stores, and not houses or apartments.

Researchers often say that wildflower plantings and prairies provide “nesting habitat” but within the western sciences, we have very little empirical evidence that demonstrates this. The only paper on this is from hedgerow plantings in CA’s Central Valley, Sardiñas et al 2016a, which found that hedgerows did not increase nesting by ground-nesting bees. I would be confident that any wild bee ecologist that would read through this report would highlight this omission because nesting habitat is critical to one of the stated goals of the report, being pollinator health. These bees could be nesting in the woods next to the plantings (Brokaw and Isaacs, in prep), only along the edges (Sardiñas et al. 2016b), or in the ditch next to the side of the road (Cane 2015, Carril et al 2018). Currently, this report barely mentions nesting or suggests nesting research as a priority. While it would be difficult for a report like this to develop metrics for nesting, future reports could include the amount of funding that is going to investments and research for wildflower plantings vs nesting habitat.

Additionally, bees interact with their nesting materials frequently, but we have very little data on how pesticide residues in soils impacts their health and ability to reproduce to sustain their populations. In a recent study by Chan et al. (2019) on squash bees, they found that even small amounts of chemicals EQB packet page - 117

made it difficult for bees to excavate nests and impacted their reproduction, with the implication that in wild populations, this could lead to population declines. More research has been conducted on stem-nesting bees, with similar findings (Artz and Pitt-Singer, 2015). When nesting materials are contaminated with pesticides, it reduces the health of wild bees.

For future reports, the urgency of studying wild bee nesting preferences and the impacts that pesticides are having on their ability to nest merits more detail. If reports don’t include this, the subsequent policy directions will make it impossible to meet the stated goals of the IPPT to improve the health of pollinators and the public awareness of bee nesting will remain limited and understudied. Seed Mix Design:

I was encouraged to see and support the statement in the report about seed mixes and highlighting specific challenges with their expense and availability. My dissertation also research focuses on developing lower-cost prairie seed mixes that still support wild bees and I’ve been in conversation with land managers across the state about the challenges of pollinator-friendly seed mixes.

I fully support all the recommendations for “Goal 1”. While native seed companies are concerned that seed harvesting on public lands could detrimentally impact their business, it is necessary to meet the demand for locally adapted native seeds. Many land managers and government agencies have best management practices for sourcing seeds to ensure that they are as locally adapted as possible, but plants they need for certain restoration projects are not available (Altrichter et al 2017). Specifically, management practices for pollinators specifically recommend highly diverse seed mixes that may include various rare species or species that are difficult to produce seed (Goldsmith et al, in prep). Many local native seed companies do not grow these plants because the investment needed to grow them would be greater than what they would be compensated for them. Overall, there is a need to create a business frameworks that creates incentives for seed companies to invest in growing rarer or hard to germinate species for restoration projects or develop legal and regulatory frameworks for state- supported seed programs (Goldsmith et al in prep).

Additionally, any laws or regulations designed for collecting seeds on public lands would need to protect areas from overharvesting and lead to potentially inequitable benefits from public resources. Some agencies within the federal government, specifically through the Bureau of Land Management, already have policies and permits in place for collecting on public lands that could be adapted for the state level (BLM 2009).

Finally, there is a need for increased communication about seed sourcing and native plant materials used for restoration. There are already venues available for this work that should occur more frequently. For example, meetings of the Native Plant subcommittee of the Minnesota Crop Improvement Association should happen more regularly and the state could take advantage of the National Seed Strategy plan that developed toolkits and recommendations for this issue.

Industrial Agriculture and Bee Declines: EQB packet page - 118

It is well documented that one of the drivers of wild bee declines and a major threat to their diversity and persistence is industrial agriculture. Industrial agriculture is the degradation of landscapes that rely on heavy chemical inputs, massive acreage of land, tile drainage the disrupts waterflow, greenhouse gas emissions, and practices that ruins soil health. Unfortunately, this phrase, “industrial agriculture” or any phrases like it, are conspicuously absent from the report. Similar to the 2020 Water Report that was explicitly focused on climate change, but didn’t mention fossil fuels or pipelines (two major drivers of climate change and degradation of clean water) (‘2020 State Water Plan: Water and Climate’, 2020), the 2020 Pollinator Report also fails to explicitly state known drivers of pollinator losses, such as the term “industrial agriculture” or obscures the drivers with ecological jargon like “habitat fragmentation/loss”.

How can this report meet any stated goals of pollinator protection and health but not explicitly state main, and scientifically proven, drivers of their losses (Potts et al 2010, Kennedy et al 2013, Goulson et al 2015, , Koh et al 2016, Sanchez-Bayo 2019, Cameron et al 2010, Harrison et al 2017)? Including and Acknowledging Indigenous Sovereignty in Land Restoration Projects:

Getting to the root of the causes of biodiversity loss and pollinator declines in our region, is fundamentally about land. The conversion prairie landscapes into agricultural fields was an intentional process of land theft from the Dakota and Anishinaabe peoples (Westerman and White 2012, Case 2018). The westward expansion of settlers was incentivized by federal policies like the Homestead Act of 1862, and misleading treaties of 1837 and 1851 made with the explicit intention of violently dispossessing the indigenous tribes of this region of their land, culture and livelihoods.

Given that prairies exist in Minnesota because of the centuries and current stewardship and management by the Dakota and Anishinaabe peoples, it is surprising that this history of prairie management and restoration wasn’t mentioned in the report. While land acknowledgements often are hollow or lack substance especially when they come from governments, I am curious about how the IPPT and the EQB public engagement framework plans to ethically engage with the tribal nations in MN moving forward.

As a descendent of white settlers from eastern Pennsylvania, I have a lot to re-learn about the history of the US and of restoration science, but I feel that it is important to mention here. Habitat restoration in Minnesota is an opportunity to honor and uphold treaty rights by returning lands that were stolen in abrogated treaties as a form of reparations and justice and returning the rights of management and stewardship (Waziyatawin, 2008). Additionally, I am concerned with the way that federal and state governments use “consultation” and language of reconciliation with Indigenous communities that often cause more harm than progress, as seen in the recent formal resignation of the MCPA’s Environmental Justice Advisory Committee and in many instances in environmental regulation and policy (Coulthard 2014, Dhillon 2017, Gilio-Whitaker 2020). Public Engagement Plan:

While, I fully support engaging with experts in developing public engagement plans, I feel wary when the “civic engagement” seems to prioritize the input from experts first, before input from an informed broader public. There is a pattern where science, especially regulatory science, is used by governments and agencies to buffer themselves from the public or used to ignore their valuable input (Fisher 1993, EQB packet page - 119

Jasanoff 2004). We know that without an explicit interconnection of science with community needs, the sciences too often serve the priorities of those in power (Schmalzer et al 2018). Based on the outline of this report, it is not clear to me how the input from outreach to diverse communities can be genuinely incorporated into the state pollinator protection priorities – especially when it might (and likely will) contradict the vested interests of the various agencies and state departments. We have seen the state of Minnesota repeatedly fail its people when it comes to public health, clean water, oil pipelines, pesticide regulation and land use by prioritizing input from corporate stakeholders who effectively derail any necessary reforms or changes.

While I feel hopeful about the intention behind the development of this public engagement framework, I will remain skeptical of any government agency doing public engagement work that seems to have developed their public engagement framework without the public at the table and seemingly without financial resources to support the sub-teams, action groups and process.

I am open to meetings for deeper discussions on these topics. Thank you for your time and I look forward to following the outcome of the report and the final draft of the public engagement plan.

Sincerely,

Julia Brokaw [email protected]

EQB packet page - 120

References Cited:

Altrichter EA, Thompson JR, Mabry CM (2017) Stakeholders’ perceptions of native plants and local ecotypes in ecological restoration. Ecological Restoration. 35(3): 218-227.

Antoine, C. M., & Forrest, J. R. Nesting habitat of ground‐nesting bees: a review. Ecological Entomology.

Artz, D. R., & Pitts-Singer, T. L. (2015). Effects of fungicide and adjuvant sprays on nesting behavior in two managed solitary bees, Osmia lignaria and Megachile rotundata. PloS one, 10(8), e0135688.

BLM (2009) Native plant materials development plan progress report for FY2001-2007. United States Department of the Interior.

Brokaw, J. and R. Isaacs. In prep. Emergence trapping for crop pollinators; Can we determine high quality nesting habitat for ground-nesting bees in blueberry fields?

Cameron, S. A., Lozier, J. D., Strange, J. P., Koch, J. B., Cordes, N., Solter, L. F., & Griswold, T. L. (2011). Patterns of widespread decline in North American bumble bees. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 108(2), 662-667

Carril, O. M., Griswold, T., Haefner, J., & Wilson, J. S. (2018). Wild bees of Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument: richness, abundance, and spatio-temporal beta-diversity. PeerJ, 6, e5867.

Cane, J. H. (2015). Landscaping pebbles attract nesting by the native ground-nesting bee Halictus rubicundus (Hymenoptera: Halictidae). Apidologie, 46(6), 728-734.

Case, M. (2018). Relentless Business of Treaties: How Indigenous Land Became US Property. Minnesota Historical Society Press.

Chan, D. S. W., Prosser, R. S., Rodríguez-Gil, J. L., & Raine, N. E. (2019). Assessment of risk to hoary squash bees (Peponapis pruinosa) and other ground-nesting bees from systemic insecticides in agricultural soil. Scientific reports, 9(1), 1-13.

Coulthard, G. S. (2014). Red skin, white masks: Rejecting the colonial politics of recognition. U of Minnesota Press.

Dhillon, J. K. (2017). Prairie rising: Indigenous youth, decolonization, and the politics of intervention. University of Toronto Press.

Fischer, F. (1993). Citizen participation and the democratization of policy expertise: From theoretical inquiry to practical cases. Policy sciences, 26(3), 165-187.

Gilio-Whitaker, D. (2019). As long as grass grows: The indigenous fight for environmental justice, from colonization to Standing Rock. Beacon Press.

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Goldsmith, N., Flint, S., Shaw, R. In prep. Factors limiting the availability of seed for Minnesota’s prairies: Stakeholder perspectives.

Goulson, D., Nicholls, E., Botías, C., & Rotheray, E. L. (2015). Bee declines driven by combined stress from parasites, pesticides, and lack of flowers. Science, 347(6229).

Harmon-Threatt, A. (2020). Influence of Nesting Characteristics on Health of Wild Bee Communities. Annual Review of Entomology, 65, 39-56.

Harrison, T., Gibbs, J., & Winfree, R. (2019). Anthropogenic landscapes support fewer rare bee species. Landscape Ecology, 34(5), 967-978.

Jasanoff, S. (Ed.). (2004). States of knowledge: the co-production of science and the social order. Routledge.

Koh, I., Lonsdorf, E. V., Williams, N. M., Brittain, C., Isaacs, R., Gibbs, J., & Ricketts, T. H. (2016). Modeling the status, trends, and impacts of wild bee abundance in the United States. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 113(1), 140-145.

Kennedy, C. M., Lonsdorf, E., Neel, M. C., Williams, N. M., Ricketts, T. H., Winfree, R., ... & Carvalheiro, L. G. (2013). A global quantitative synthesis of local and landscape effects on wild bee pollinators in agroecosystems. Ecology letters, 16(5), 584-599.

Potts, S. G., Biesmeijer, J. C., Kremen, C., Neumann, P., Schweiger, O., & Kunin, W. E. (2010). Global pollinator declines: trends, impacts and drivers. Trends in ecology & evolution, 25(6), 345-353.

Sánchez-Bayo, F., & Wyckhuys, K. A. (2019). Worldwide decline of the entomofauna: A review of its drivers. Biological conservation, 232, 8-27.

Sardiñas, H. S., Ponisio, L. C., & Kremen, C. (2016). (a) Hedgerow presence does not enhance indicators of nest‐site habitat quality or nesting rates of ground‐nesting bees. Restoration Ecology, 24(4), 499-505.

Sardiñas, H. S., Tom, K., Ponisio, L. C., Rominger, A., & Kremen, C. (2016). (b) Sunflower (Helianthus annuus) pollination in California's Central Valley is limited by native bee nest site location. Ecological Applications, 26(2), 438-447.

Schmalzer, S., Chard, D. S., & Botelho, A. (2018). Science for the people: Documents from America's movement of radical scientists. University of Massachusetts Press.

2020 State Water Plan: Water and Climate. (2020). Minnesota Environmental Quality Board, purusan to Minnesota Statutes 103B.151, 103A.43.

EQB packet page - 122

Stuligross, C., & Williams, N. M. (2020). Pesticide and resource stressors additively impair wild bee reproduction. Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 287(1935), 20201390.

Waziyatawin (2008). What does justice look like? The Struggle for Liberation in Dakota Homeland. Living Justice Press, St. Paul, MN.

Westerman, G., & White, B. M. (2012). Mni sota makoce: The land of the Dakota. Minnesota Historical Society.

EQB packet page - 123

Comments on Final Pollinator Report and Draft Civic Engagement Framework

November 18, 2020 EQB Meeting by Willis Mattison, Professional Ecologist and ad hoc, Self-Appointed, Temporary Ecological Advisor to the EQB

The Minnesota Environmental Policy Act admonishes state agencies to avoid making ecologically unsound decisions. MEPA also requires EQB to create advisory councils with persons in appropriate fields of specialization to ensure that the latest and most authoritative findings will be considered in such decisions.

Stakeholder Panels and even Interagency Panels are clearly not the advisory councils contemplated by the Legislature in MEPA because they lack the degree of objective and authoritative independence that is the standard for peer reviewed science. Researchers are not allowed to choose their critics when submitting their work for publication in reputable scientific journals. Several degrees of separation and special qualifications are required to ensure credibility and objectivity by such panels and it is no less so for the advisory councils MEPA requires.

Without assurance of such well-qualified and independent objectivity in government advisory councils the general the public cannot and should not have full confidence in government reports or the policies based on them.

Indeed, the very first such advisory council in American government was the National Academy of Science created in the 1800’s to advise the President. But the NAS was independent then as it is now except for special funding from Congress.

Minnesota has no such independent science advisory institution. Now, more than ever, is the time to fulfill this MEPA mandate.

We are all witnessing the dire consequences of policy-makers ignoring expert advisory panel advice with the current pandemic but at least the in this case the well qualified expert’s advice has been transparent.

EQB packet page - 124

Experts have been boldly proclaiming that bad public policy for pandemics is costing humans their lives.

But even some pandemic experts are paying a high career price for their candidness and thus such experts on panels such as these must not be government employees.

We are all aware that healthy and diverse pollinator and more importantly, healthy insect populations in general, are essential to human life as we know it. Independent science tell us that losing too many of these populations will also cost many humans their lives. Unfortunately, the segment of the planet’s human population that will suffer first and most are the least politically powerful.

As a professional ecologist, and experienced government regulator, I have been somewhat critical of the EQB’s Pollinator Reports, its recent Water Plan and even the Emerald Ash Borer Reports for their lack of independent peer review, for potentially flawed strategies as well as for their lack of reasonable metrics for efficacy and accountability. The short time afforded me during these regular Board meetings has not allowed me to sufficiently expand on or authenticate my criticisms.

Let me be clear. To criticize the current EQB reports is not to accuse anyone of corruption or incompetency; far from it. Peer review is simply well founded and long-standing best professional practice welcomed and encouraged by professional scientists. No research scientist wants their work published and used if it contains flaws they were not aware of. To do so would be potentially harmful to society.

It is clear that the EQB is poised to approve these reports in spite of these criticisms. I’m well aware that I seem to be one of the few independent scientists providing this kind of review. Advocacy groups reviews you have been receiving and that of the general non-scientific public must be received as self-interest driven or relatively uninformed compared to that of qualified scientists. I and you must understand that my colleagues in the scientific community seldom pay much heed to reports such as these; they are busy with their own and their peer’s work. Note the lack of their presence here today. Do not mistake that for broad approval from the scientific community, it is not.

EQB packet page - 125

But I do take heart in the more recently developed draft Civic Engagement Framework for it holds some promise of fulfilling at least a form of the recommended peer review by experts I’ve advocated. I’m also very much encouraged by the draft framework’s inclusion of SWOT analysis techniques and International Association for Public Participation spectrum levels that lean more toward full and meaningful public involvement. I am a member of the IP3 so am quite familiar with and an ardent fan of this spectrum.

But most importantly from my scientific point of view, the draft plan proposes to use sub-teams and to seek the opinions of outside subject matter experts.

If these experts are not hand picked by the authors of these reports or the agencies involved but better resemble the independent recruitment of reviewers as is done in the scientific community there will be an opportunity to begin the peer review I’ve advocated. And peer review sub-teams must not be diluted by other special interest or general public members. Their scientific advice should remain clearly distinguishable from that of other sub-teams that may delve into policy or be otherwise motivated to discount contrary scientific input.

I stand ready to work with the IPPT’s Civic Engagement team to further fill out this framework with some of the best professional practices for civic engagement and for scientific peer review. Together, we can make these reports and programs better and increase their probability for success.

Thank you for allowing me to contribute these comments.

Willis Mattison, Professional Ecologist (retired) Osage, Minnesota

EQB packet page - 126

Hello all,

Hope you are healthy and well in this unprecedented 2020. My apologies for sharing relevant pollinator information at the last minute for you all again. Looking forward to joining you all virtually this afternoon. Apologies if you're receiving this email twice. I'm sending this email a second time with links not attachments; I just got a message my first attempt was too big and bounced back.

I commend you as the EQB for your continued commitment to the IPPT and to the issue of pollinator decline here in Minnesota. Thank you for your 2020 Pollinator Report and all the work you've done during this year.

I'll be submitting the below for public comment later today but wanted to share (slightly) in advance.

I have mentioned this before, but without impactfully restricting pollinator's exposure to pesticides we won't be able to curb pollinator declines. I do not think that current efforts go far enough to restrict exposures.

There are three recent relevant efforts I wanted to bring to your attention.

1.) The Pollinator Stewardship Council is a national organization made up of many of the largest commercial beekeepers in the country, including a number of large and small MN beekeepers. In June, the PSC, along with over 3000 beekeeper sign ons, sent the linked letters from Dr. Susan Kegley, Dr. Jeff Pettis, and Dr. Jonathan Lundgren to the USEPA, calling for the ban of the neonicotinoid class of systemic insecticides.

These letters are a strong summary of the scientific consensus of, in PSC Board President, MN commercial beekeeper and former GCPP member Steve Ellis words 'the unmitigated disaster systemic neonicotinoid insecticides represent for pollinators.' Dr. Lundgren's letter details the lack of advantage farmers see in their bottom lines from use of these chemistries, fitting in directly with your framing of Goal 2: 'while maintaining economic strength.'

2.) To corroborate the MDA's Neonic Review Action Step of Creating a Treated Seed Program to track use, the Xerces Society, National Resources Defense Council and other organizations petitioned the California Department of Pesticide Regulation to Regulate Crop Seeds Treated with Neonicotinoids and Other Systemic Insecticides. The petition coincided with the release of Dr. Pierre Mineau's report: Neonicotinoids in California: Their Use and Threats to the State’s Aquatic Ecosystems and Pollinators, with a Focus on Neonic-Treated Seeds. MN is not California, but so much of both of these documents are directly relevant. One thing that stuck me is the incredible effort Dr. Mineau and his team went to in order to calculate systemic insecticide use and drift through seed treatments. The ecosystem repercussions of this use makes clear the size of this pesticide exposure loophole MN continues to leave unchecked.

3.) The current Presidential Administration continues to reverse EPA and Federal Court pesticide restrictions. Two chemistries I'll highlight: EQB packet page - 127

-Chlorpyrifos is an organophosphate (OP), highly toxic to bees, that impairs human brain development, which was announced to be pulled from the market by manufacturers earlier this year. In our GCPP meetings, the regrettable substitution argument was continually brought up: if we restrict neonicotinoid use growers will need to use more chlorpyrifos. This argument obfuscates both that chlorpyrifos and other OP's continue to be used at substantial, human-health threatening levels in MN and that, back to Dr. Lundgren's letter to the EPA, farmers are using neonics without economic benefit.

-The herbicide Dicamba has direct impact on farmer crops, and on pollinator health through forage destruction. Registration for dicamba was cancelled in June 2020 in response to court order. US EPA reversed this decision in late October 2020.

It's clear that the current federal process fails to protect human health and ecosystems, and that, I would argue, as a state leading in pollinator protection efforts, our Minnesota Department of Agriculture needs to take on a larger role in providing these protections. I want to commend the MDA for conducting a Special Registration Review of Chlorpyrifos, for their IPM efforts (IPM, when defined well, does protect pollinators; Dr. Vera Krischik's LCCMR IPM Project website is a phenomenal resource) and for including the pesticide complaint line in this report. Yet I continue to urge the MDA to take a bold stance in their approach to the regulation of chemistries that harm bees.

I appreciate your work on this important issue.

Erin

-- -- Erin C. Rupp Founder, Pollinate Minnesota pronouns she/her/hers www.pollinatemn.org 612.245.6384 www.facebook.com/pollinatemn Instagram, Twitter @pollinatemn